The South African wheelchair basketball team are on the brink of qualifying for the Paralympic Games in Beijing after advancing to the final of the qualifier on Saturday. Team Sasol beat Egypt 71-53 in their semifinal at the Omnisports Stadium in Rabat and will now clash with Morocco for the one Africa spot at the Paralympics.
For centuries the traditional dress of South America’s indigenous people has been mocked as the garb of losers. The Indians lost power to the conquistadors, they lost land and wealth to waves of European settlers, and eventually they lost pride. But in a dramatic turnaround, the style has now become synonymous with authority.
United States Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, the Democratic party’s frontrunners for the White House, are locked in a battle that has unleashed a raft of negative campaigning as their party debates who should be its 2008 presidential candidate. An ugly fight between the two politicians raged all last week.
German and Israeli filmmakers have come together to tackle the subject of the Holocaust for the first time in an ambitious screen adaptation of a bestselling novel. Their groundbreaking collaboration over the highly sensitive topic has attracted a star-studded cast in what has been described as a ”tightrope walk” of a project.
The Afghan government threatened to use force against Taliban fighters holding 22 South Korean aid workers on Saturday unless the 10-day kidnapping crisis was resolved quickly. The insurgents executed one hostage last week as Korean and Afghan negotiators scrambled to find a peaceful resolution to the crisis.
In the darkest depths of the Arctic Ocean, a new Cold War is brewing. American and British nuclear submarines lurk in the shadows, preparing for company. Such talk is redolent of a Le Carré novel. But the battle between the West and Russia over who owns the Arctic has been building for years.
Iraq is facing a hidden healthcare and social crisis over the soaring number of amputations, largely of lower limbs, necessitated by the daily explosions and violence gripping the country. The revelation of the scale of limb loss suffered by Iraqi civilians is not entirely surprising, even though it has gone unreported.
The Bush administration is expected to announce a massive series of arms deals in the Middle East on Monday that are being seen as part of a diplomatic offensive against the growing influence of Iran in the volatile region. The centrepiece of the deals is an agreement between the United States and a group of Persian Gulf nations.
The national executive committee of the African National Congress (ANC) on Saturday reviewed the deliberations and outcomes of the party’s recent policy conference, and debate focused on the policy challenges towards 2012. Guidelines and a timeframe for anaudit of ANC membership were discussed.
Faced with mounting energy crises, many African nations in recent years have zealously launched projects to produce cheaper biofuels, but few have gained steam. Struggling under the ever-rising cost of fossil fuels while fighting crippling levels of poverty and disease, Africa hopes biofuels will boost its economic fortunes.