Troops loyal to South African presidential hopeful Jacob Zuma have arrived in the Democratic Republic of Congo in preparation for a coup against the incumbent President, Joseph Kabila. The African National Congress Youth League is keen to find new sources of income with which to foot the bill for its "babe magnet" BMWs.
"Soccer runs in our family’s veins," says proud dad Ozzie Liebestein. And sometimes outside his family’s veins, too, by the looks of things: five minutes into the interview the nasty gash to his forehead is still oozing. Most fathers might have had a few sharp words to say to their sons had they too been felled by a roundhouse kick to the mandible, but Ozzie will hear none of it.
South African football bosses have unanimously committed themselves to keeping unwelcome attitudes and influences out of the local game. "Victrocentrism" — the disturbing desire to win matches — has been identified as a major threat to local football.
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/ 23 December 2005
At some point in the past 10 years or so — opinions differ as to exactly when it was — people working in the toy industry began to notice something troubling. Toy marketers, perhaps to counterbalance the idea that they spend their days playing, pride themselves on their keen business sense.
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/ 28 November 2005
”When I left Japan in 2003, things were looking terminally gloomy. For most of the previous seven years reporting from Tokyo, I had written an unrelenting stream of miserable stories about salarymen suicides, zombie companies and a corrupt one-party political system dying slowly from sclerosis,” writes The Guardian‘s Jonathan Watts.
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/ 15 November 2005
After 25 years of rapid development, China has established itself as the workshop of the world. Now it is moving towards a new phase — from mass producer to superconsumer — that could lead to one of the biggest redistributions of the planet’s resources in history.
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/ 17 October 2005
Political reform is likely to be high on the agenda of a closed-door meeting of China’s communist leaders amid growing strains between a population demanding more rights and a bureaucracy increasingly using illegal means to maintain its grip on power.
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/ 28 September 2005
China’s explosive rise to economic superpower status was confirmed by the West’s leading think tank recently, in a new report predicting that the Asian nation would leapfrog the United States and Germany within five years to become the world’s biggest exporter. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development said there would be no let-up in the country’s breakneck growth.
President Robert Mugabe found a sanctuary from international criticism in Beijing, as the Chinese government gave him an economic deal that is expected to provide Zimbabwe with desperately needed funds. The cooperation agreement signed with Chinese President Hu Jintao reflects a strengthening alliance between Mugabe, who has adopted a “look East” policy to circumvent Western critics, and the Beijing government.
Chinese censors have banned Serve the People, named after Mao’s most famous slogan, saying ”This novella slanders Mao Zedong, the army, and is overflowing with sex.” Jonathan Watts reports from Beijing .