Opium poppy cultivation has been almost eradicated in Asia’s Golden Triangle, the border zone between Burma, Thailand and Laos that was once the world’s most prolific supplier of opium, according to a report published by the United Nations on Monday.
Israel continued to mass forces on the borders of Gaza on Monday to reinforce its demand for the immediate release of a captured Israeli soldier while Palestinian security services attempted to track down the kidnappers. Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, said he had told the Israeli army ”to prepare for a broad and ongoing military operation to strike the terrorist leaders and all those involved”.
The Freedom of Expression Institute (FXI) has expressed concern at Zwelakhe Sisulu’s involvement in a commission of enquiry set up to probe whether the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) sought to gag commentators critical of President Thabo Mbeki.
‘Whenever we see a picture of a refugee it is always someone lying on the ground with flies on their face!" exclaims Dosso Ndessomin. Ndessomin (42) is tired of the portrayal of refugees as passive victims, with endless needs and nothing to offer. The reality is vastly different, he says, and he should know: he came to South Africa from Côte d’Ivoire as an asylum seeker in 1994.
President Thabo Mbeki may have to work the phones if the struggle for the Nigerian presidency degenerates, as many fear it will, into a nation-threatening crisis. For many well-placed Nigerians, the crucial intervention of Mbeki and the patriarch, Nelson Mandela, in Nigeria’s crises over the past decade has been a form of repayment for the country’s long commitment to ending apartheid.
The South African school principal of the future will have a special qualification in school management to prepare him/her for the job. The position will come with special conditions of service that mean if he/she does not perform, he/she can be removed from the position by the Department of Education.
In the mid-19th century Karl Marx claimed that European colonisers, though corrupt and violent, were the "unconscious tool of history" that would propel India and China into modernity. He described the backward "Asiatic mode of production", defined by the absence of private ownership and the presence of a rigid, centralised form of government that prevents change and modernisation.
President Robert Mugabe appeared to turn to spiritual salvation to lift a country battered by more than six years of a deep economic and political crisis, but analysts said only sweeping reforms will salvage the Southern African country from total collapse.
A careful assessment of Iran’s recent statements on its nuclear standoff with the West should make at least two things crystal clear: Iran’s rigid and unwavering position on its right to enrich uranium at home (if only for research purposes) and the United States’s staunch resolve not to let that happen.
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