The United Nations (UN) and the African Union (AU) have agreed on a highly mobile, robust joint force to help protect civilians and restore security to the Darfur region — but Sudan still holds the key to its deployment. The report proposes tripling the number of peacekeepers now in Darfur with an AU-UN ”hybrid” force of at least 23 000 soldiers.
Bill Johnston, a member of Don Bradman’s 1948 ”Invincibles”, has died at the age of 85, Cricket Australia announced on May 25. Johnston was a versatile left-arm bowler who played 40 Tests for Australia between 1947 and 1955, capturing 160 wickets at an average of 23,91.
Five United States soldiers were killed in four separate attacks across Iraq on Thursday, most of them by roadside bombs, the US military said on Friday. The US military also reported the death of another soldier on Tuesday in a roadside bomb attack near Tikrit, 175km north of Baghdad.
Rising numbers of women in Britain are seeking state-funded cosmetic surgery on their genitals, doctors said on Friday. Writing in the British Medical Journal, they said the number of ”labial reductions” carried out in National Health Service hospitals had doubled to 800 a year over five years.
At least 14 people, nine of them schoolchildren, have been killed in a five-vehicle accident on the N2 highway near East London, Eastern Cape police said on Thursday. Captain Stephen Marais said a group of schoolchildren returning to Elliotdale in two minibus taxis were involved in the accident shortly after 7pm.
Lebanon’s worst internal violence for two decades is in danger of spreading throughout the country, politicians, diplomats and refugees warned on Thursday, as anger grew at the tactics of the Lebanese army fighting Islamists in a northern refugee camp.
Among fashionistas, just one name — Prada — reigns supreme. Now that name is finally available in South Africa, for style-obsessed female aesthetes. Callaghan, an exclusive boutique carrying Chloé, Cacharel and Nicole Farhi, has become the first stockist of Prada’s casual-wear range, Linea Rossa. Boutique owner Shirley Tamaris said her first shipment arrived last week.
Huddled around a campfire in a community deemed unworthy of inclusion on Australia’s official maps, Aboriginal elder Dick Brown reflects on a vote that ended the practice of counting his people among Australia’s flora and fauna. "We thought that it would change for the better," Brown says without rancour when asked about the 40th anniversary of a landmark vote that recognised Aborigines as full Australian citizens for the first time.
More than 10 years ago, there was a guy who fixed the motor on our front gate. He drove one of those little Suzuki vans known as a half-loaf. But this was no ordinary half-loaf. He had taken out the engine, put in an electric motor used to drive golf carts and a network of batteries, and he had his own electric car. The only reason we all didn’t drive electric cars, he suggested, was that strong vested interests kept us tied to fossil fuel-powered vehicles.
Evidence of a frankly inventive approach to reporting has chipped away at the reputation of the late Polish writer Ryszard Kapuscinski. But when it came to the big picture, in Africa and elsewhere, the author of <i>The Emperor</i>, among other books, tended to get things right. Take the subject of crude oil, for example, and the invariably damaging consequences for poor countries where large deposits are discovered.