Described by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists as one of the world’s worst jailers of journalists, Eritrea has at least 13 reporters in prison. Little has been heard of the journalists. The charges against them apparently include avoiding the military draft and threatening national security.
Standing in Magdeburg’s maternity clinic, Hubertus Schulz contemplated his empty delivery suite. In one corner, a fluffy stork with a red beak adorned a baby-less incubator. ”I’d like to have a bit more to do, to be honest,” Dr Schulz, the clinic’s chief doctor, said. ”I’ve been working here for 25 years. We used to be full of babies. Now this is rarely the case.”
Enron’s founder, Kenneth Lay, on Tuesday ended six days of trial evidence claiming he had done all he could to avoid the company’s collapse, an event he described as the ”most painful thing” in his life. In the last of a series of bruising exchanges the federal prosecutor, John Hueston, attacked Lay’s refusal during his evidence to accept the blame for what had happened to the company.
A rash of cases of Malaysian women being tricked into having sex with fraudulent "healers" has prompted a warning from authorities for women to beware of smooth-talking con men. In the latest case, a 41-year-old woman was tricked into having sex dozens of times with a medium who claimed to be the "Ninth Emperor of the Kingdom of God".
About 101 suspects accused of involvement in deadly riots in East Timor last week are being detained after 25 more arrests were made, the foreign ministry said on Tuesday. Thirteen of those held were among nearly 600 soldiers, or a third of the tiny nation’s armed forces, who deserted the army in February complaining of discrimination.
Bolivia defended on Tuesday the government’s seizure of its vast natural gas industry after the move triggered deep concerns among major foreign investors. Brazil, a huge consumer of Bolivian gas, and Spain expressed worry, while the United States said it was keeping an eye on the situation, one day after leftist Bolivian President Evo Morales gave foreign gas and oil investors 180 days to renegotiate their contracts.
Okay, so abstinence hasn’t worked very well, featuring more in conversations than in bedrooms. Male condoms mean trusting men both to display foresight and to eat the proverbial "banana with its peel on", while female condoms are scarce, awkward and apparently noisy. A vaccine against that quick-change-artist, the Aids virus, is science fiction — and likely to remain that way for a long time.
It is a long way from a tiny Lebanese mountain village of 5Â 000 people to a boardroom in Johannesburg, but that is the story of Cell C CEO Talaat Laham. Laham heads a company in flux. Having captured a 10% market share in the South African mobile sector in the past four years, Cell C is positioning itself to take full advantage of the regulatory and technological changes that are set to shake up the sector in the next three years.
At a petrol station outside the Cuban town of Cienfuegos, half a dozen teenage girls stand languidly by the pumps, jumping to attention when a car or lorry pulls up. They work the pumps efficiently, take payment and enter the transaction on to a large official form. They are dressed neatly in T-shirts and jeans and a slogan across their backs proclaims their identity as <i>trabajadores sociales</i>, or social workers. They are Fidel Castro’s latest army of guerrillas.
In the dusty border town of Adre, battered pickup trucks roar around the quiet streets with clumps of rifle-toting men clinging to the roof. Most wear the distinctive brown camouflage issued to the army, but others sport the gowns and turbans favoured by the local population. In this poor, but oil-rich nation, no one raises an eyebrow at unmarked trucks bristling with machine guns.