Britain and other European governments should break from the United States over the international embargo on Gaza, former US president Jimmy Carter said on Sunday. Carter described the current European Union position on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute as ”supine” and its failure to criticise the Israeli blockade of Gaza as ”embarrassing”.
Ewen McKenzie rates Saturday’s Super 14 rugby final as the ultimate challenge as he pits his wits against the Canterbury Crusaders’ incoming Wallabies coach Robbie Deans. The NSW Waratahs coach has put behind a season of off-field turmoil to steer the Sydney team to their second Super rugby final.
Sitting in the Hongyan restaurant, its vast three-storey marble facade rising above a busy street, Liu Shunyou stubbed out his cigarette.”I only started smoking to block out the smell of dead bodies all around the town,” he explained. As Sichuan’s devastated quake zone turns its attention to rebuilding, it should look north-east for inspiration.
Mozambique has received nearly 20Â 000 citizens fleeing South Africa, said Deputy Foreign Minister Henrique Banze, adding that the government there had set up three reception centres around the capital Maputo. He denied reports that the Mozambican government had declared a state of emergency.
A Japanese plumber was arrested for calling a toll-free number around 500 times so he could hear a taped female voice, police said on Monday. Hiroyuki Nomoto, a 38-year-old Tokyo resident, was arrested on suspicion of obstructing the business of the company, a food firm based in the city of Takasaki north of the capital.
The Atfaluna Society for Deaf Children runs a school for 275 non-hearing children, but the classrooms have been empty for almost six weeks because there isn’t enough fuel to bus the learners to school. Every day parents call the school in Gaza City to ask Suad when it will reopen.
As the gruelling fuel crisis continues, so does the strain on local public transport services, including ambulances, across the Gaza Strip. Only about 15% of these services are operating, with up to 90% of private cars off the roads and all of Gaza’s 450 fuel stations closed.
The perennial question hanging over all talks in the Middle East is to decide whether they are a temporary sop to an intractable problem, or whether they herald major change. There are many reasons why the peace talks that Israel and Syria this week admitted they were holding could fail.
It is a subject that has engaged some of the biggest names in international letters: Don DeLillo in Falling Man, Ian McEwan in Saturday and Jonathan Safran Foer in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Each attempted to explain in imaginary terms that great reordering of western life, which happened on 9/11 when New York’s Twin Towers were destroyed by al-Qaeda terrorists.
The government should appoint a commission of inquiry to probe the xenophobic attacks that have claimed at least 50 lives and left thousands of people homeless, the United Democratic Movement (UDM) said on Sunday. UDM president Bantu Holomisa said there was a need for a transparent inquiry that would analyse the attacks and remove suspicions that they were ”deliberate and orchestrated”.