Iran will tell the United States and Britain to get their troops out of Iraq and leave the problem for neighbouring countries to sort out when regional and Western foreign ministers, including the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, meet at a special Iraq summit in Egypt starting on Friday.
The surge in prostitution that accompanied the 2006 Football World Cup in Germany is forcing the South African Police Service to reconsider its usually sporadic approach to policing the sex industry in the run-up to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.
Many of us feel that the South African media’s shortcomings — especially newspapers — are exemplified in the manner in which it reports on the president. President Thabo Mbeki has been something of an enigma to the local media for so long that now it has grown tired of trying to understand him, opting instead for vilification, writes Mphuthumi Ntabeni.
Outside, a macabre street party, a necrothon. Inside, Judge Basheer Waglay holds everyone spellbound. This is the culmination of the 15-month Cape High Court drama that has followed every Hollywood rule — except that it is real, and the ashes of a six-month-old baby now lie in the Garden of Remembrance
Amid the chaos of Guatemala City’s evening rush hour, a grieving father sits motionless on a concrete bench beside a main road. On New Year’s Day his seven-year-old daughter was killed. She had been sent out to buy a nappy for her baby brother but never arrived home — hours later her decapitated body was found in one of the deep gullies that run through the capital’s slums.
‘Hands up those who know who the black person to invent a clock is,” said the teacher to her class. No child raised a hand. “Does anyone know who Patricia Bath is? Who is the black person who invented the electric kettle in 1922?” Again, no hands were raised.
Despite the concerted efforts of Khutsong residents, the government is pressing ahead with its decision to have Merafong local municipality incorporated into North West. The Merafong Demarcation Forum (MDF) strategy of mounting mass protests in opposition to the demarcation appears to be ineffective.
Let’s hope Lords Hutton and Butler (authors of two United Kingdom reports into the circumstances surrounding the invasion of Iraq) were taking notes. An 81-year-old retired judge, Eliyahu Winograd, has just given a masterclass in how to conduct a genuine, fearless and plainspoken inquiry into a government failure.
The winds of digital revolution have taken education by storm and do not appear to be relenting. Today’s new buzzword — raved about by e-learning fanatics — is podcasting and it is being hailed as an innovation that will enhance the quality of teaching and learning.
”Inge Bongo, the heiress to a very rich country in Central Africa, is in town to purchase a home. [Estate agent] Kurt Rappaport shows her a -million property in Malibu’s exclusive Broad Beach area, but she feels the home ‘lacks grandeur’. [Agency] co-owner Stephen Shapiro shows her a stately -million Beverly Hills mansion that turns out to be just what she’s looking for.”