No image available
/ 8 November 2006
A Democratic takeover of the United States Senate rested on Wednesday on a few thousand votes as two races were too close to call and risked throwing an American election once again into extra time. Senate races in Montana and Virginia were agonisingly tight but appeared to be trending towards the Democrats.
No image available
/ 8 November 2006
When Hiba Sami (38) freely married her husband 18 years ago, she never thought she would one day be forced to divorce him against her own will. ”I love my husband, but my family has forced me to divorce him because we are Shi’ite and he is Sunni. My family say they [the husband’s family] are insurgents,” Sami said.
No image available
/ 8 November 2006
For many HIV-positive people in South Africa’s Embo area, south-west of Durban in KwaZulu-Natal, accessing treatment at public health facilities is as difficult as navigating the steep and muddy paths between their homes. People from these parts usually have to travel distances of up to 25km to access treatment.
No image available
/ 8 November 2006
The so-called black middle class does not really exist, says politician turned businessman Saki Macozoma. ”It is a [mere] conceptual construction,” A media report quoted him as saying on Wednesday. Macozoma, currently chairperson of Stanlib, said the black group concerned does not have much of a ”class consciousness”.
No image available
/ 8 November 2006
From ancient ruins in Thailand to a 12th-century settlement off Africa’s eastern coast, prized sites around the world have withstood centuries of wars, looting and natural disasters. But experts say they might not survive a more recent menace: a swiftly warming planet.
No image available
/ 8 November 2006
James Bond may be the spy who never ages, but over his 44-year film career his adventures have swollen ridiculously with impossible gadgets, implausible plots and implacable supervillains. Well, this is the year Bond trimmed those excesses and got back to basics.
No image available
/ 8 November 2006
The church handyman who is going to bury PW Botha says he has no reason to think ill of the former state president. ”As I see it, he was a good person,” Manie Botman (40) said on Wednesday morning at the Dutch Reformed Church at Hoekwil near Wilderness where Botha is to be interred.
No image available
/ 8 November 2006
The first musical adaptation of Porgy and Bess premieres this week in London, featuring classic jazz songs like Summertime that helped save the Gershwin opera from the critics after it opened in 1935. The story of Porgy and Bess unfolds during a steamy 1930s summer in a black slum in Charleston, South Carolina against a backdrop of murder, drugs, and prostitution.
No image available
/ 8 November 2006
A debilitating strike which affects health services in Mpumalanga is continuing on Wednesday, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) said. Provincial spokesperson Norman Mokoena said a meeting between the National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union and Mpumalanga Premier Thabang Makwetla deadlocked on Tuesday afternoon.
No image available
/ 8 November 2006
Ana Ndayizeye embodies the havoc that the unrest in Africa’s war-torn Great Lakes region has played on people’s lives. The 25-year-old was born in a refugee camp and knows no other world. Born, raised and married in camps, the second-generation refugee has flitted from the Congo to Tanzania to Mozambique, where she now lives in the Maratane refugee camp.