A REPORT into the August bombings of two United States embassies in East Africa has faulted several government agencies for failing to properly assess the security threat. The report, released by the US state department on Friday, found that the embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam had not been provided with adequate security against […]
One million rounds of bullets tipped with uranium were fired during the Gulf War. They slice through tanks. And this is what they do to humans. Maggie O’Kane reports on Iraq’s deformed children, victims of a war they never knew The movement inside her body is strange: different from her three other children. As Suad […]
The euro is here, but how will it affect you? Belinda Beresford reports Like Spock and Captain Kirk caught in a malfunctioning transporter beam, the euro is not yet fully in this world. It is still elusive, existing only in cyberspace, on price tags and travellers cheques. The real notes and coins won’t be jingling […]
Thokozani Mtshali Arrive Alive’s billboard campaign to reduce deaths on South Africa’s roads this holiday season has been greeted with scepticism by many motorists. The campaign was launched 14 months ago in conjunction with traffic departments, the Ministry of Transport and the South African Police Service (SAPS) in a bid to reduce road fatalities. But […]
IN a case of coals to Newcastle, buyers from Saudi Arabia are interested in acquiring 141 camels to be auctioned off by the Botswana police next month. Camels have been used for patrolling the Kalahari desert since last century. The Botswana police is cutting back its camel inventory from 171 ships of the desert to […]
Adam Mars-Jones HEAVY WATER AND OTHER STORIES by Martin Amis (Jonathan Cape) Without the story State of England, this would be a dismaying volume to come from the champion British fiction writer of his generation. Unlike his tightly themed previous collection, Einstein’s Monsters, this one brings together early work (two stories from the Seventies, one […]
Characteristics that distinguish us from apes may have been forced on our ancestors by the presence of water, writes Ruben Mowszowski If the proponents of a revolutionary theory of human origins are correct, our ancestors abandoned the trees not for the savannah, but for the water – and humans share more physical traits with dolphins […]
Donna Block Share World I have a New Year’s confession to make: my husband and I are personally responsible for keeping the world economy ticking over. This small feat has been accomplished by madcap, non- stop spending. You name it, we’re buying it with cash, cheques and credit cards. We are spending in shops, malls […]
EGYPTIAN women will soon be able to buy a divorce even if their husband objects, under a draft law outlined by the government Al-Ahram newspaper on Thursday. Justice Minister Faruq Seif an-Nasr said that a new law on personal status is being drawn up to simplify legal procedures and it will go before Parliament shortly. […]
THE ALL-TRUE TRAVELS AND ADVENTURES OF LIDIE NEWTON by Jane Smiley (Flamingo) Jane Smiley is best known for her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, A Thousand Acres, and in her new book she returns to rural life in the United States’s Midwest. This time, though, she goes back in time to the years leading up to the […]