Reports suggesting that Iran has sought Saudi help in mediating its nuclear and other disputes with the Bush administration are wide of the mark. When President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad travelled to Riyadh at the weekend, he had a wholly different object in view: wrecking the ostensibly anti-Iranian coalition of "moderate" Arab states, plus Israel, painstakingly assembled by the United States in recent months.
Presidential hopefuls within the ruling Zanu-PF party are courting international diplomats to put pressure on 83-year-old President Robert Mugabe either to step down or embrace political reforms. Their thinking is that Mugabe’s departure will pull the country out of a deepening economic crisis.
Scientists have developed a test for the early diagnosis of lung cancer. They hope that analysis of the genes that are switched on and off in cells lining the airways leading to the lungs can be used to diagnose patients sooner and make treatments more effective.
Between June and December 2006, Mogadishu and most of south-central Somalia enjoyed relative peace after the notorious warlords who devastated the country were routed by the Islamic Courts. The courts swiftly stabilised the capital and won people’s hearts by providing much-needed security. Regrettably, the law and order restored by the courts was destroyed when Ethiopian forces invaded the country in December.
Barack Obama, a star of the Democratic party and a frontrunner in the presidential race, was forced on to the defensive this week over past financial dealings. Disclosure of his share dealings in two companies was a knock to Obama, who is campaigning on a platform of higher ethical standards in politics and tougher restrictions on political funding and lobbying.
The arrest of anti-corruption activist Sarah Wykes in the Angolan province of Cabinda has highlighted Angola’s ruthless treatment of its critics. Wykes, who works for the international NGO Global Witness, which aims to increase transparency in extractive industries, has been accused of espionage by the Angolan authorities and is forbidden to leave the country.
Given that my friends either call themselves feminists or are, at the very least, intelligent and independent, I have been surprised, as I have reached my late twenties, by how many have turned out to be desperate to get married. A few years ago they were raging over the pay gap and the glass ceiling — but recently their concerns have changed.
A friend visiting from Sierra Leone once nodded in agreement with a Nigerian colleague’s comment: ”The great thing about South Africa is that you really value your languages.” She had asked me what language Generations or Isidingo characters were speaking to each other, finding it remarkable that national television used more than one language in this way, writes Pumla Dineo Gqola.
In one episode of that brilliant television drama set in the White House, West Wing, two of the incumbent president’s aides are discussing who to endorse as his replacement. ”What happened to the days when a few crusty old men sat in a smoke-filled room and chose the candidate over cigars and port? They didn’t choose so badly. They chose men like Roosevelt and Truman,” one of them says.
Unknown gunmen kidnapped BBC correspondent Alan Johnston in Gaza City on Monday afternoon, Palestinian security officials said. Johnston, a two-year veteran of the Gaza Strip, was driving his rental car in the city’s upscale Remal neighbourhood when a white Subaru blocked his path.