The Republican leadership was struggling on Wednesday to stop a scandal over a Florida congressman’s sexually charged e-mail exchanges with teenage congressional assistants spiralling into an election debacle, amid growing pressure for the House speaker to stand down.
While President Mahmud Ahmadinejad is busy running a high-voltage campaign against the United States and its policies, back home citizens are wondering if he will ever make good on an election promise to crack down on the corrupt and distribute Iran’s vast oil revenues more equitably.
Chad’s oil industry, with its output of 160 000 barrels a day, is tiny compared with Venezuela and Russia. But Chad is looking to exert more control over its natural resources. The President, Idriss Déby, recently announced he was kicking United States oil giant Chevron and Malaysian player Petronas — who together own 60% of the consortium running Chad’s -billion pipeline — out of the country for non-payment of taxes, a charge both companies deny.
Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian President, said on Wednesday that attempts to form a coalition government with the ruling Hamas movement had failed despite a mounting economic and security crisis. A joint programme agreed between his Fatah movement and Hamas last month had collapsed.
It is a century since Bhambatha kaMancinza, inkosi of the Zondi, ambushed a police patrol at Mpanza north of Greytown in Natal and, with 150 men, headed for the Nkandla forests in Zululand. There, joined by thousands, he defied the colonial government. This was the Bhambatha rebellion or impi yamakhanda, the ”war of the heads”, named after the head or poll tax that sparked it off.
Why isn’t there an iPod for electronic books (eBooks)? And where’s the eBook equivalent of an iTunes store? Last month Sony launched two products in the United States that it hopes will address both issues. The Sony Reader is a paperback-sized device with a 15cm screen that can store about 80 eBooks, or hundreds on a plug-in memory card.
In recent times, there has been much talk about the causes of teachers stress. Recently the manager of the central regional office of the North West department of education reported at a principals meeting that they were processing up to 500 leave forms a week for teachers who were lying in hospitals because of stress.
Mark Latham is the former leader of the Australian Labour Party. He once broke a cabbie’s arm in a fight over the fare. The British Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott once punched a guy who’d pelted him with an egg. They are both lovely big men. Latham has just written a book in which the key quote is: ”Australian mates and good blokes have been replaced by nervous wrecks, metrosexual knobs and toss bags.”
With a lingering kiss, and a prime-time declaration of love that brought
rousing applause from the audience, a gay couple stole the show at the Tony
awards in New York last week writes, Gary Younge.
It’s 2056. After a coup in Saudi Arabia, the new government announces it is cutting off supplies of its dwindling stock of oil to the United States. The White House responds by sending in the troops, but is forced to withdraw after Beijing says it will only continue shoring up the dollar if the military action is called off. The Americans have no choice but to comply. Fanciful? Ludicrous?