Syria is hailing its return from international isolation with a landmark visit on Wednesday by the European Union’s foreign policy chief as diplomacy in the Middle East intensifies ahead of a key Arab League summit in Saudi Arabia at the end of this month.
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Dwayne Smith claimed three for 36 to follow up an explosive 32 off 15 balls as the West Indies launched the 2007 Cricket World Cup with a 54-run victory over Pakistan on Tuesday. Pakistan, chasing the West Indies’ total of 241 for nine off 50 overs, slumped to 187 all out off 47.2 overs.
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Australian paceman Glenn McGrath claimed on Wednesday that World Cup Group A rivals South Africa can’t handle pressure. The two sides meet in Basseterre, St Kitts, on March 24 in what will be a highly-charged game with the winner taking crucial extra points with them into the second round Super Eights.
Gay rights groups on Tuesday criticised the head of the United States joint chiefs of staff, General Peter Pace, over an interview in which he described homosexuals as ”immoral”. Aides to Pace insisted he was not planning to apologise. But he later put out a statement that he described as a clarification.
Underdevelopment, poverty and the low status of women remained the main ”drivers” of HIV/Aids in South Africa, the Health Department said on Wednesday. An estimated 55% of those living with HIV in South Africa were women, according to the draft National Strategic Plan on HIV/Aids and Sexually Transmitted Infections.
”I once spoke to a journalist who had covered the war in Bosnia in the early 1990s. He said that he and his colleagues kept heading into harm’s way, because they believed that once the world knew of the horrors they had witnessed, the world would be stirred to act,” writes Jonathan Freedland.
Just when you thought you had acquired the knack of asking for a grande skim white chocolate caffé mocha or a Venti peppermint soy extra-hot sugar-free cinnamon latte, Starbucks has to go and raise the stakes. The company that turned ordering a cup of coffee into an assault course of choice has announced it is extending its Seattle savvy into the music business.
Britain called on Tuesday for a "very robust international response" against the Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s government for its brutal crackdown on the opposition. "The situation is appalling. I condemn last Sunday’s beatings and arrest of opposition leaders," junior Foreign Office Minister David Triesman.
Gladwell Otieno is the executive director for the Africa Centre for Open Governance, based in Kenya. An uncompromising anti-corruption campaigner, she attended the Africa Forum on Fighting Corruption that recently took place in Johannesburg. Haydée Bangerezako spoke to her about continental anti-corruption efforts.
Tuberculosis cases are rising rapidly in the Mozambican coastal town of Beira, according to local doctors. The city of half a million, which is the capital of the country’s most HIV/Aids-affected province, logged 2 736 new TB cases last year, a 5% increase from 2005. ”.