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/ 5 September 2006
The line snaked past the Canadian embassy in Beirut on a sweltering afternoon. Sandra fanned herself with the visa application she prayed was her ticket out of Lebanon. ”I can’t live here any more,” said the 35-year-old university researcher, who gave only her first name. ”This war was the final straw.”
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/ 5 September 2006
As the entry of Bulgaria and Romania into the European Union edges closer, the condescension towards Eastern Europeans and their countries of origin grows. The double standards could not be more glaring. Bulgaria and Romania are routinely portrayed as backward, mafia-ridden hellholes that will infect the rest of the continent.
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/ 5 September 2006
A new generation of small green companies is emerging with radical but proven ideas to revolutionise engineering and create anything from intelligent fridges to colossal wind turbines moored at sea. The designers hope their projects will transform energy supplies and cut carbon emissions in the next 20 years.
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/ 5 September 2006
BP faced a further serious attack on its integrity this week with the disclosure that United States federal investigators were looking into allegations that it had manipulated oil and unleaded gasoline markets. The latest setback came 24 hours after Lord Browne, the chief executive, was told by a US state judge that he would have to personally testify in death and injuries cases resulting from the Texas City refinery fire last year.
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/ 5 September 2006
Last week highlighted the powerful value of small justice. Adriaan Vlok, it was revealed, had apologised to the Reverend Frank Chikane by symbolically washing his feet. And in a less high-profile case, the acclaimed struggle lawyer Shun Chetty was posthumously reinstated as an attorney. He had been struck off the roll in 1980.
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/ 5 September 2006
The ceasefire ending the 20-year insurrection by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in Uganda appears to be holding, with the rebel leader, Joseph Kony, making plans to go home. Some of his LRA fighters have started moving into cantonment areas in the north of the country, after Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni ordered his forces not to fire on the insurgents.
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/ 5 September 2006
At least two people died on Monday after inhaling toxic fumes from waste dumped three weeks ago in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, reportedly by a foreign-registered vessel, a medical source said on Tuesday. ”There were two deaths, a four-year-old girl and another aged nine years,” said an official at Abidjan’s teaching university hospital of Cocody.
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/ 4 September 2006
Film and Publications Board CE Shokie Bopape-Dlomo says the ”media frenzy” over proposed amendments to the Film and Publications Act took her by surprise. Reports that newspapers would have to forward articles for pre-publication classification were based on a misunderstanding, she said in an interview this week.
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/ 4 September 2006
The government has moved to limit the fallout from a warning by Kwazulu-Natal Judge Chris Nicholson that a ”grave constitutional crisis” could occur if it defied court orders. ”Government wishes to reassure all South Africans in general, and the judiciary in particular, that court judgements are binding on the state and that all state institutions will abide by court decisions.
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