High-seas pirate attacks have risen in the first three months of this year, and incidents are becoming more violent with the rate of hostage-taking doubling, an international watchdog said on Wednesday. The International Maritime Bureau recorded 61 piracy attacks worldwide in the first quarter of 2006, compared to 56 in the same period last year.
After decades under suspicion, Sigmund Freud is making a comeback in the country of his birth 150 years ago, where he left a legacy complex enough to merit a few sessions on the couch. In Prague, seminars, conferences and public exhibitions over his influence on art, as well as smaller events in his birthplace Pribor, all testify to something of a Freud revival in the Czech Republic.
Chad’s incumbent candidate, Idriss Déby Itno, cast his vote on Wednesday in presidential elections boycotted by opposition parties and shadowed by Sudan-backed rebels committed to toppling Déby from power. Virtually certain of victory, Déby hailed the fact that the elections were going ahead despite the boycott and repeated clashes with United Front for Change (FUC) rebels.
The South African National Editors’ Forum announced the launch of its ”Media Freedom Is Your Freedom” campaign on Wednesday, World Press Freedom Day, with an advertising drive subtitled ”What you can’t see, can hurt you.” It said the campaign is geared to highlight the value of a free media in South Africa.
The outlook for property performance remains bullish, especially in the area of commercial property, according to First National Bank (FNB). This is based on FNB’s view of further mild declines in interest rates and real economic growth of between 4% and 5% per year for the rest of the decade, says FNB property strategist John Loos.
After managing his first victory of the season in the last race in Imola at the San Marino Grand Prix Michael Schumacher is hoping for a repeat performance this Sunday at the European Grand Prix on the Nuerburgring. ”Imola should not be a once-only. We are determined to leave the Nuerburgring with a victory,” the seven-time world champion said.
They are among the most popular paintings in the world but for decades they were starved of natural light and displayed in a building likened to an oversized garden shed. Now, after six years of renovation work delayed by archaeological mishaps, Claude Monet’s giant Water Lilies are finally back on display at the Orangerie museum in Paris.
It had all the makings of a classic: the free-flowing football revolutionaries of Hungary against the flamboyant artistes from Brazil. Yet 90 minutes, three sendings off and several mass brawls later, and the 1954 World Cup quarterfinal between the two sides was jostling for top spot in the tournament’s hall of shame.
Three Kuwaitis and an Indian convicted of murder and a Pakistani found guilty of drug trafficking were hanged in Kuwait on Tuesday, the largest number of executions in a single day in 16 years. The five men were hanged inside the interior ministry building in Kuwait City before dozens of spectators were allowed to view their hooded corpses.
Even now, almost five years later, horse trainer Bob Holthus shakes his head about the ordeal. The threat of a quarantine is sometimes just one stall or one mosquito bite away. Of all the dangers on the track, nothing quite compares to the panic a possible outbreak can cause.