With earnings of maybe R40-million from the movie <i>The World’s Fastest Indian</i>, Sir Anthony Hopkins did much better from Herbert James Munro’s love for his 1920 Indian Scout than the eccentric genius from New Zealand did. Gavin Foster looks at the life of Munro, one filled with crashes and motorcycle maintenance.
An Indian doctor was detained in Australia for questioning in connection with a suspected al-Qaeda plot to detonate car bombs in London and Scotland as he tried to leave the country. The detention of the hospital registrar at Brisbane airport widened the international dimension of the investigation.
African leaders argued fiercely on Monday over whether to rapidly create a single state stretching from the Cape to Cairo, with one small group threatening to break away. Delegates said the atmosphere in an African Union summit was charged as a group of states led by Libya’s Moammar Gadaffi and Senegal’s Abdoulaye Wade argued with a more gradualist majority led by South Africa’s Thabo Mbeki.
United States President George Bush created a political storm on Monday by intervening to stop the disgraced White House aide, Lewis ”Scooter” Libby, from going to jail. Bush, in a statement, said the prison sentence imposed on Libby, who was found guilty of perjury in a complex spy case linked to the Iraq war, was too harsh.
The summit between presidents George Bush and Vladimir Putin ended on Monday without a breakthrough on the issues that have brought relations between the two to the lowest point since the Cold War. The Bush administration hoped the informal setting would be conducive to diplomacy.
Between 510 000 and 740 000 new jobs a year are needed to meet the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa (Asgisa) target of halving unemployment by 2014, according to Merrill Lynch. The economy has grown by more than 4% a year over the past three years and figures show this has added only about 500 000 jobs each year.
After years of relative calm, the yakuza have recently captured the public imagination in Japan. Shoko Tendo’s story, <i>Yakuza Moon: Memoirs of a Gangster’s Daughter</i>, has become a surprise bestseller in Japan in 2004, shining a light into a dark and little-understood corner of modern Japan.
Fears are growing for the welfare of detained Burmese Aids activist Phyu Phyu Thin (35), who has been on a hunger strike since June 19. Thin and 11 other activists were arrested on May 21 while attending a prayer service for opposition National League for Democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been under house arrest for 12 years.
"We want to shed the light on the mystery of this thing called governance. What is governance? What is it about?" Mo Ibrahim, the chairperson of Celtel International and the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, which supports good governance in Africa, speaks to Stephanie Wolters.
COUNTERPOINT: Whether ultimately we call it a United States of Africa, an African Union, United Africa or what have you, the ideal of African unity is an abiding yearning. It has been with us, in different guises, since the closing years of the 19th century, not long after the start of the Scramble for Africa.