Bridget Baker’s quirky takes on life and art are refreshingly free of the PC and guilt-edged imagery produced by many of her peers, writes Hazel Friedman.
Peace talks between Somalia’s interim government and the Islamist militia in control of the capital and the southern regions of the country are due to begin in Sudan this weekend after an about-face by President Abdullahi Yusuf. Yusuf recently sent a delegation to the talks being held under the auspices of the Arab League.
Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe is refusing to pay fees for his youngest son, Chatunga, insisting that the fees do not match the consumer price index. Recently, Minister of Education Aeneas Chigwedere wrote a letter to the privately run Hartman Primary School instructing it to cut this term’s school fees from about Z-million to Z-million.
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Jomo Sono has all but given up any ambitions of coaching Bafana Bafana when South Africa hosts the 2010 World Cup, claiming that Local Organising Committee chief executive Danny Jordaan wants a foreign coach at the helm. Sono was interviewed last month by the South African Football Association technical committee.
American Floyd Landis won the 17th stage of the Tour de France, a 200,5km ride from St Jean de Maurienne to Morzine on Thursday. Spaniard Oscar Pereiro Sio retained the overall leader’s yellow jersey. Spaniard Carlos Sastre finished second on the stage, five minutes and 42 seconds behind Landis. France’s Christophe Moreau took third, 5:58 off the pace.
A group of 51 mainly African undocumented immigrants who have been moored off Malta for five days will be taken in by several countries, reports said on Thursday. The migrants were rescued by a Spanish fishing vessel from a boat that was adrift and had run out of food.
A tiny United States marine force landed in Lebanon on Thursday to evacuate Americans stranded by a nine-day old Israeli bombardment, which has killed more than 300 people but failed to stop Hezbollah rocket strikes on Israel. It was the US military’s first return to Lebanon since it withdrew in 1984, months after a Shi’ite Muslim suicide bomber destroyed a marine barracks, killing 241 US service personnel.
Shops reopened and cars passed through Abidjan’s previously barricades streets on Thursday following a near-complete shutdown of Côte d’Ivoire’s commercial capital by hard-line supporters of President Laurent Gbagbo. The Young Patriot militants said they had made their point with one day of protest.
Uganda said on Thursday it will organise a trip next week for relatives of Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels, including LRA supremo Joseph Kony’s mother, to visit their kin at a jungle hideout. ”This is a confidence-building measure,” Ugandan delegation spokesperson Paddy Ankunda said from the southern Sudanese capital of Juba.