South African President Thabo Mbeki has underscored the World Economic Forum on Africa’s focus on developing agriculture to absorb unemployment and fight poverty on the continent. Speaking in a plenary session on Friday, he said the central issue confronting Africa was job creation.
I’m drifting off at the Guardian Hay festival as Al Gore tells us how to save the planet — turn off the lights, cut down on private jet trips, listen to me, just about sums up the message. Gore had started off so smart and funny, too — the politician as stand-up comic with a brilliant schtick on failure.
The offices at the top of a converted warehouse in the Edinburgh port of Leith are a bit of a squeeze. As he talks, Mel Young’s head seems almost in the skylight, but there is no containing the boundless plans for his current project, the Homeless World Cup.
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By tradition, the heavens beneath which Italy’s Azzuri train for a World Cup is of a blue as deep as the team’s shirts. But this campaign at the retreat in Coverciano on the edge of Florence began under a weeping, leaden sky. ”Even God wants to piss on us,” shrugged a security official at the gates.
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It had meant getting up at 5am and travelling for almost three hours across Switzerland, but for Maria da Silva Hasler the effort was worth it. ”I am felicissima — as happy as can be!” said the 39-year-old Brazilian, accompanied by her Swiss husband, Lukas.
It might be a surprise that Jean de Villiers will captain the Springboks in a non-Test match this weekend, but not that South African rugby is still trying to drag itself out of the gutter. Last week, two of the biggest problems bit the dust: the president and his love child, the ill-conceived, over-hyped, over-funded and under-performing Southern Spears.
South African Olympic gold medallist Ryk Neethling is distraught after his Sandton home was robbed early on Friday morning and some of his medals stolen. Neethling’s agent Fiona de Souza told the <i>Mail & Guardian Online</i> on Friday that the swimmer is "devastated" about the robbery.
A Buddhist humanitarian aid group said on Friday that two troop trains packed with soldiers collided head-on in North Korea in April leaving more than 1 000 dead. The reported accident occurred in Kowon County in the remote and rugged north-eastern province of South Hamkyong on April 23 when a train’s brakes failed on a downhill stretch of track.
For five weeks, the Van Ryn family watched over the broken body in the hospital bed, keeping a blog of their vigil as they hoped and prayed for the young blonde woman with the wide smile to emerge from her coma. When she yawned on May 15, they rejoiced and so did readers of their blog: it meant the patient was breathing on her own.
South African companies bidding to build an airport on St Helena have triggered fears that their workers may bring the first case of HIV/Aids to the British island. ”At the moment, we have no known cases of HIV or Aids,” said governor Michael Clancy of Saint Helena, the South Atlantic island located about 1Â 700km off the coast of Namibia.