Lord Browne, BP’s chief executive, held out the prospect of a big drop in crude oil prices to a barrel as he dismissed views that petroleum was running out very fast. His optimism came despite a 1c rise in the price of Brent crude for July delivery to ,49 a barrel in morning trading in London, as traders continued to fret about tensions in the Middle East.
So today we will again sing and dance and listen to speeches extolling the virtues of a generation, a township and an uprising. The young people in Bafana Bafana should not have been here; instead they should have been at the soccer World Cup in Germany. But that is beside the point.
When Brigitte Bardot cavorted on the sand in a gingham bikini in St Tropez in 1955, while her husband Roger Vadim trained his camera on her for the film And God Created Woman, she established not only the popularity of the two-piece but the reputation of St Tropez as the beachwear capital of the Western world.
A group of men sits huddled around a two-plate stove. They rub their hands, trying to stay warm; one eats porridge with a wooden spoon straight out of the pot. This is the end of the line for Johannesburg’s homeless, and every night between 500 and 800 people bed down in the halls of the Central Methodist church in Johannesburg’s inner city.
By taking to the streets with courage and a strong sense of defiance, those brave young people involved in the Soweto uprisings helped to bring down apartheid and usher in the democracy we enjoy today. Although young South Africans can stop focusing on liberation and enjoy more freedom of expression than ever before, the problems they face are as serious to them as apartheid was for the youth during the protests.
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The 30th anniversary of the 1976 Soweto Uprising provides an occasion to reflect on the legacy of these remarkable events. Many believe that the 1970s initiated a new phase in the struggle against apartheid. In his book <i>Citizen and Subject</i>, Mahmood Mamdani argues that this period marked a shift from the exile-based armed resistance to a broad internal popular struggle.
When the gods created Madagascar, they panned the universe for things weird and wonderful, flung them to the heavens and let them fall willy-nilly to the island below. Anything that couldn’t or wouldn’t fit, it seems, was shoehorned into the capital Antananarivo — a place so obscurely cobbled together it has the appearance of a jigsaw puzzle roughly assembled from random bits.
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England stuttered into the second round of the World Cup in Germany on Thursday after late goals from Peter Crouch and Steven Gerrard handed them a flattering 2-0 victory over Trinidad and Tobago. Crouch, who had missed a series of chances throughout the match, finally made amends seven minutes from time.