The FBI dug up farmland outside Detroit on Thursday in a search for the remains of the legendary trade union boss Jimmy Hoffa, who disappeared more than 30 years ago. Hoffa, the all-powerful leader of the Teamsters truck drivers’ union, went missing on the afternoon of July 30 1975.
A senior British officer accused Pakistan of allowing the Taliban to use its territory as a ”headquarters” for attacks on Western troops in Afghanistan as insurgents struck on multiple fronts on Thursday. In one of the worst 24-hour periods since they were ousted from power in 2001, the Taliban launched two suicide bombs, and numerous firefights.
North Korea appears to be preparing to fire a long-range ballistic missile, Japanese media reports said on Friday. Satellite photographs showed activity near a missile test site in north-eastern North Korea last week that indicated a launch of a Taepodong ballistic missile could be imminent, the reports said, citing unnamed sources.
Britain and the United States were on Thursday night facing almost total isolation in Iraq after Italy’s new Prime Minister, Romano Prodi, made it clear that he intended to pull out the third-biggest contingent in the military coalition at the earliest possible opportunity.
There was something odd about the way the police were moving: eight or 10 of them edging backward up the dingy canyon of Plein Street as if in retreat from the mass of striking security guards. They were carrying shotguns, and the bright discs of rubber bullets showed in their bandoliers, but they looked frightened, they looked like they were being herded.
‘I fear we will live to regret the 2007 conference," a senior African National Congress figure told the <i>Mail & Guardian</i> recently. He was referring to the fevered atmosphere of power-lust, greed, fear, revenge and conspiracy gripping the party as a consequence of the battle between Jacob Zuma’s supporters and detractors.
I have come into the possession of a most intriguing document. It is a questionnaire currently being sent out to authors by South African publishing houses; clearly a first attempt to put plagiarism on a professional footing. Plagiarism, of one form or another, is the newest trend in South African post-transformation creative writing, and is fast gaining popularity.
Shelve the abiding fiction that disasters do not discriminate — that they flatten everything in their path with "democratic" disregard. Plagues zero in on the dispossessed, on those forced to build their lives in the path of danger. Aids is no different.
Recently Transnet CEO Maria Ramos resolved a nine-month dispute with four striking transport unions that threatened to derail the restructuring of the transport parastatal. The unions decried her unilateral efforts, but the agreement largely keeps her reform agenda on track with the difference now that the unions are on board as part of the process.
Strasbourg in spring is a delight. Blossoms swirl in a warm breeze drowsy with Chanel and partially digested sauerkraut. Along the canals nannies shunt prams, little Jean-Ennui or Klaus-Glockenspiel wrapped snugly in a cocoon of cotton and human rights legislation. Up in the narrow cobbled streets, blackbirds sing from rooftops.