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/ 25 September 2007
Flicking through the newspapers recently I was stopped in my tracks by an image of the new Vanity Fair cover. This shows Nicole Kidman — two-time Oscar nominee, one-time winner — with a military cap on her head and an open-mouthed expression. Said expression is, I guess, supposed to be a Monroe-esque pout, but just makes her look completely bloody vacant.
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/ 25 September 2007
Willy the florist has had enough of his kingdom. He is an unwilling subject of an unloved country. A middle-class father of 12-year-old twins running a thriving flower business in this small Dutch-speaking town on the eastern fringe of Brussels, Willy is reduced to obscene gesturing by the very mention of his country.
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/ 25 September 2007
Germany’s politicians are locked in a heated debate after the defence minister signalled his readiness to shoot down hijacked planes at the risk of killing innocent civilians in order to avert a wider disaster. The comments of Josef Jung of the Christian Democrats have unleashed a passionate debate across the parties and led to calls for his resignation this week in an emotional session in the Bundestag, the German Parliament.
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/ 25 September 2007
Nearly two million Iraqis have become refugees in their own land in the past year, redrawing the ethnic and sectarian map of Baghdad and other cities, a report by the Iraqi Red Crescent said this week. In Baghdad alone, nearly a million people have fled their homes. Last month saw the sharpest rise so far in the numbers of Iraqis forced to abandon their homes — 71,1%.
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/ 25 September 2007
The Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund is hoping to build a children’s hospital in Johannesburg to provide specialist care for children from across Africa. The proposed hospital will complement the multimillion-rand development of a health precinct already under way in Hillbrow, which is part of Johannesburg’s R2-billion inner-city regeneration project.
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/ 25 September 2007
A group of Richtersvelders is trying to stop the Land Claims Court from making the settlement signed on April 22 with Public Enterprises Minister Alec Erwin an order of the court. After more than 10 years of legal battles fought against the government for restitution, as well as land and mineral rights, an agreement was signed between the community and Erwin, making the community a minority shareholder in present and future mining operations.
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/ 25 September 2007
The ANC national executive committee decided in 2004 that the Merafong municipality be moved from Gauteng to North West. All subsequent public participation processes were, in effect, doomed from the start, court papers claim. These contentions were made in the Constitutional Court by Khutsong residents challenging President Thabo Mbeki to reverse the decision to incorporate the cross-border municipality of Merafong into North West.
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/ 25 September 2007
The middle-class Avenues area on the northern peripheries of Harare’s city centre is a residential and commercial office zone with stark contradictions. One minute the sound of gunshots fills the morning air as police exchange fire with robbers; the next, church bells are tolling and harmonic voices are heard as women sing hymns in church and well-dressed middle-aged men and women walk to their offices.
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/ 25 September 2007
General Pervez Musharraf’s strategy for survival has finally become clear, after months of political turmoil in Pakistan. He plans to quit as chief of the army staff, before taking the presidential oath — but only after he has been re-elected by the outgoing parliament.
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/ 25 September 2007
The fierce morning heat was a memory. The afternoon haze had come and gone. It was the cool of dusk, with shadows stretching as the sun dipped below the Andes. And Hugo Chávez was still talking. The Venezuelan president had started at 11am, more than eight hours earlier — a new record.