Young Asian readers seeking the thrill of ghouls and haunted houses no longer turn only to Western favorites to satisfy their itch. Asia’s answer to the record-selling British boy wizard Harry Potter is the Mr Midnight series of books. The appeal, says author Jim Aitchison, is the books’ ability to address an Asian child’s values and sensibilities.
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After he converted a last-minute penalty to beat Australia in the second round of the World Cup, Francesco Totti said winning the ”scudetto” with AS Roma in 2001 remained the highlight of his career. Maybe he’ll have a new most memorable moment if Italy wins the title on Sunday. ”It’s the realisation of a dream. We only need a little bit more to make history,” Totti said.
There is little to break the silence at Kolwezi, once the economic powerhouse of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), now a landscape of industrial desolation. Potholed roads lead to ruined, rusted factories. Trucks and bulldozers are lined up neatly, as if ready to roll, but the wheels are missing and the engines have cobwebs.
Palestinians holding an Israeli soldier said on Tuesday that they had ended negotiations on his fate after Israel ignored an ultimatum to begin releasing prisoners. The Hamas-led militants holding Corporal Gilad Shalit had said if Israel had not begun releasing some of the 1 500 prisoners by 6am on Tuesday it would ”bear the consequences”.
Western Cape road users will soon have to pay a provincial fuel tax of between 10 and 50 cents a litre in addition to the current national levy, the media reports said on Wednesday. The money raised through the levy would be used to pay for the rehabilitation and upgrading of transport infrastructure and to develop a high quality public transport system.
Nasa called it ”a gift to the nation”. On Tuesday the shuttle Discovery finally blasted off after several days of delays to lend a spectacular fiery flourish to the United States’s Independence Day celebrations. ”I can’t think of a better place to be on the Fourth of July,” said Steve Lindsey, the shuttle commander, moments before Discovery roared into a clear Florida sky.
Uganda has offered a ”total amnesty” to the rebel warlord Joseph Kony, who was indicted by the international criminal court last year for crimes against humanity. The government offered the amnesty in exchange for Kony abandoning the civil war he has waged for the past 19 years, in which his Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has slaughtered civilians and abducted thousands of children.
The United Nations Security Council was expected to meet on Wednesday to try to craft a response to the provocative firing of up to six missiles by the North Korean regime. Tuesday’s launch was intended to cause maximum irritation to Washington — timed within minutes of the launch of the shuttle Discovery on Independence Day.
We publish excerpts from the African National Congress national working committee’s (NWC) response to a South African Communist Party central committee discussion document. These excerpts provide a glimpse — but only a glimpse — of the arguments contained in the document, which is more than 7 000 words long.
The headline act at this year’s FNB Dance Umbrella is Akram Khan’s <i>Ma</i>. Khan originally trained in Indian dance, but regards his art as a confusion of styles. Veronika Peimer-Bednarova tries to make sense of it all.