A glossy magazine cover depicting a bare-breasted Angela Merkel suckling the nationalist twin rulers of Poland has reignited tensions between Berlin and Warsaw — just days after a bad-tempered European summit nearly collapsed because of Polish resistance to a German blueprint on how to run the European Union.
From New York to the Antarctic, from Shanghai to Rio de Janeiro, the world is getting ready to rock on Saturday as organisers of the Live Earth events seek to raise awareness of global warming. We publish a selection of the acts to look out for at the eight Live Earth concerts being promoted by former US vice-president Al Gore.
Click on image for full-size view.
Eyelids closed, I clutched a fistful of marble-white sand, fine as flour, then opened my palm to feel the warm sea breeze blow it gently away. I squinted into the sunlight, across the iridescent white, the palm-lined shore, out to the aquamarine ocean, the azure sky. Here I am, in the place with the most poetic name in the world, writes Ed Vulliamy.
An African summit overran on Tuesday as the leaders struggled to avoid a damaging public split over moves to unite the continent under one federal government. The three-day meeting was one day longer than other recent summits and had only one agenda item, the campaign for a United States of Africa.
About 20 passengers drowned in the River Benue in central Nigeria when their dug-out boat capsized after hitting an object, police said on Tuesday. The boat was carrying about 40 passengers, mostly ethnic Fulani cattle herders fleeing from the district of Guma to the Benue state capital Makurdi after a dispute with local farmers.
A man who allegedly held Pretoria News staff hostage earlier this year was denied bail in the Pretoria Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday. Lionel George (32) was denied bail after the court heard that he had been acquitted on a murder charge, 702 reported.
Czech teenager Nicole Vaidisova proved she has grit as well as glamour when she sent defending champion Amelie Mauresmo spinning out of Wimbledon on Tuesday. Vaidisova won their rain-interrupted fourth-round clash 7-6 (8/6), 4-6, 6-1 to reach her first All England Club quarterfinal.
Entertainer Taliep Petersen died only after two previous murder bids planned by his wife, Najwa, went awry, Cape Town’s Wynberg Regional Court heard on Tuesday. The claim emerged during a bail application by Najwa and Abdoer Emjedi, one of her three co-accused, in a courtroom packed with about 150 family and members of the public.
The latest crime statistics released on Tuesday prove crime is out of control despite government assurances to the contrary, opposition parties said. ”We are alarmed at the increase in murder [2,4%], the 118% increase in bank robberies … and the sharp increase in robberies at residential premises,” Inkatha Freedom Party spokesperson Velaphi Ndlovu said.