The shutdown of communications in Burma has slowed information to the outside world to a trickle, with the number of reports to one exile group cut by half and websites with the .mm Burma suffix being unavailable, campaigners said on Sunday.
The unveiling of a multimillion-rand extension to the international terminal building of the OR Tambo International Airport was a milestone in preparing for the 2010 World Cup, Transport Minister Jeff Radebe said in Johannesburg on Sunday.
South Korea’s president said on Monday he would use the second summit between the leaders of the divided Koreas to press for peace and an eventual arms cut. Roh Moo-hyun will lead a motorcade from Seoul on Tuesday, which includes business leaders, bureaucrats, poets and clerics.
The Democratic Alliance is to ask President Thabo Mbeki questions in Parliament relating to National Prosecuting Authority head Vusi Pikoli’s suspension and the reported warrant of arrest issued for police National Commissioner Jackie Selebi. The party’s parliamentary leader Sandra Botha said it was "imperative that the president informs the nation".
When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s combative president, provoked his latest controversy in New York this week by asserting that there were no homosexuals in his country, he may have been indulging in sophistry or just plain wishful thinking. While Ahmadinejad may want to believe that his Islamic society is exclusively non-gay, it is a belief undermined by the paradox that transsexuality and sex changes are tolerated and encouraged under Iran’s theocratic system.
Once upon a time there were two countries separated by an ocean. One was called China and its people worked long hours to produce cheap goods. The other was known as the United States. Once its people worked hard and it was the workshop of the world. But recently the US had not worked so hard and for every $100 of goods and services produced in its factories and offices, $106 was spent in its shopping malls.
There has been much interest recently in mine-contaminated water, with media reports highlighting the issue and concern mounting that environmental and health risks are not being managed effectively. Africa’s variable and unreliable water resources have been a source of conflict for centuries.
Temperatures in the Niger Delta’s swelling creeks are up again following threats by the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend) to resume attacks on oil infrastructure and kidnapping expatriates in the area. Mend made the threats recently after the arrest in Angola of Henry Okah, aka Jomo Gbomo, the leader of the main Mend faction.
Columnists should generally resist the temptation to write about themselves. Unless purely comic, the column that begins "I want to tell you about my awful experience on the Guava Fruit Airline the other day" is a self-indulgent expropriation of a public space. But writing about the organisation that one has been employed by for 12 years is I hope forgiveable, especially if it seeks to make a broader point.
Prosperity has come at a price in Belgium. As affluence has grown, so has the country’s waste mountain — a problem that all governments are finding increasingly hard to ignore. But, the region of Flanders in Belgium claims to have found a solution, and the world’s waste authorities are beating a path to its door.