Once you have found your perfect home and the right financial package to go with it, you start on the rather complicated and annoyingly long process of making an offer and waiting for transfer to take place. The first step is to sign an offer to purchase, which the seller can accept or reject within a period you specify.
The road sign says it all. "Sand!" I suppress a giggle, looking at the dunes to the left and right of the main road. "No kidding," I mutter, as we continue bumping our way north, in the middle of a desert, far removed from the comforts of home and surrounded by, well, lots of sand.
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. To many the bearded cleric is a menacing symbol of militant Shi’ite Islam. But to millions of his admirers, both inside and outside Iran, he is the hero of one of the world’s last great revolutions. A decisive de facto grass-roots revolt in 1979 that unseated Shah Reza Pahlavi and brought to an end a self-indulgent regime.
Helicopter gunships and a humanitarian crisis greet the few Westerners who make it to Kassala, an eastern Sudanese town far from the infamous Darfur region, where analysts say a bad situation could be about to get worse. With international media and aid groups focused on war-torn Darfur in the west, restrictions on journalists mean that a crisis in many ways worse than Darfur’s goes largely ignored.
The news that British politician Mark Oaten blamed his baldness for his midlife crisis parted the nation’s opinion neatly down the middle. There are some who feel that losing one’s hair is hardly an excuse to inaugurate a same-sex relationship behind one’s wife’s back at around the same time as one is running for the leadership of one of the country’s major political parties.
With less than a day to go until the first matches kick off in the Soccer World Cup tournament, shops are heaving with World Cup merchandise: football shirts and scarves. And then there are the condoms. It may seem reassuring that football supporters travelling to Germany are being encouraged to be sensible, but there is a pernicious side to the connection between the 2006 World Cup and sex.
If the golden rule of property buying is location, location, location, then the golden rule for buying a car must be research, research, research. Cars are not cheap and if you don’t do the required homework — which, of course, includes finding out what you like and what you can afford — you may live to regret it.
Eight-year-old Ghada Tahseen stood silently as the doctor helped her slip on rubber overalls filled with plaster. It felt strange and uncomfortable, but she didn’t complain. ”I am really happy that I will have a new leg,” she said after a plaster model of her missing limb had been made. ”Now I can play again with my friends and go back to school.”
Azizullah, the serious-minded son of a Pakistani farmer, yearned for martyrdom. The Taliban made his wish come true. The zealots inspired him to jihad, trained him to shoot and dispatched him to fight the infidel Americans across the border in Afghanistan. So it was fitting that after he died, trapped under a hail of American firepower, a procession of black-turbaned men brought him home.
For 21 years, builders in the United Kingdom have been legally bound to construct homes that conserve energy. The building regulations tell them how much insulation they must use, what kind of windows they must fit and how good their draught-proofing will be. Guess how many builders have been prosecuted in that period for non-compliance? None.