Authorities have now removed 401 children from a remote ranch in west Texas belonging to a breakaway Mormon sect linked to jailed polygamist leader Warren Jeffs, Texas authorities said on Monday. Patrick Crimmins, a spokesperson for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, said 401 children have been taken from the compound.
Hillary Clinton’s faltering presidential campaign will undergo a ”mini-makeover” that will emphasise her more caring side following the departure of its main strategist, Mark Penn. Penn’s exit, announced on Sunday, follows clashes over his outside work for other clients as well as screaming matches with senior campaign staff and withering criticism of his strategy.
China on Tuesday denounced protesters who upstaged Olympic Games torch relays in London and Paris, with state media saying that saboteurs are bent on wrecking Games goodwill. An international Olympic official also criticised the protests, but said the relay would stay on its round-the-world course.
Kenya opposition leader Raila Odinga refused to meet President Mwai Kibaki for coalition government talks on Monday, deepening a stalemate on the naming of a new Cabinet. The coalition Cabinet is a key part of a February 28 deal that curbed weeks of deadly clashes set off by Kibaki’s disputed re-election in December.
The national congress of the African National Congress Youth League was indefinitely postponed on Monday evening after being unable to finish its work or confirm the results of its leadership election. Electoral commission member Malusi Gigaba told journalists in Bloemfontein that the League would ask the ANC to help solve its differences.
After bursting into politics in 1994, Italy’s richest citizen became the embodiment of political incorrectness.It was Berlusconi who told a German politician he reminded him of a concentration camp guard. It was he who reacted to 9/11 by urging Westerners to be ”aware of the superiority of our civilisation”.
While prices of wheat, corn and other agricultural commodities have surged since the end of 2006, rice held fairly steady.Aware that shortages of such a vital staple could spell trouble at home, Asian governments have moved to ensure their people get enough to eat at a price they can afford, an insurance policy that has in turn raised prices further.
Warren Foster looks at music videos that objectify women and asks what the point of it all is, since it is not only reserved to male artists’ videos only anymore.
Bloomsbury assured the market last week that the magic has not deserted it in the post-Harry Potter era and it is banking on a strong line-up of books in the year ahead. Reporting 2007 results, the publisher said it not only benefited from big sales for the final boy-wizard instalment, but also from the success of Khaled Hosseini’s <i>The Kite Runner</i> and <i>A Thousand Splendid Suns</i> and other books.
There can be little doubt that all South Africans need to commit themselves to transformation. The recent racist video taken at the University of the Free State and the persistence and extent of racialised patterns of poverty are just two of the more obvious reasons it is necessary to keep working to change society and to remove the legacy of apartheid.