Vietnam was set to host an international conference on Tuesday on the effects of the Vietnam War defoliant Agent Orange, bringing together veterans and delegates from at least six countries. Vietnamese civilians and soldiers from all sides of the conflict claim health defects from the chemical that United States forces used to strip away jungle cover and destroy food crops.
Myanmar’s increasingly reclusive and repressive military junta showed off its mysterious new capital, Naypyidaw, to outsiders on Monday for the first time, during a ceremony to mark Armed Forces Day. The country’s paramount leader, General Than Shwe, used his speech at the parade of 12 000 soldiers to announce that his much-promised transition to democracy would still take ”some time”.
The British-born shoe bomber, Richard Reid, had been part of an al-Qaeda plot to fly a fifth hijacked plane into the White House on September 11 2001, his self-confessed co-conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui told a Virginia court on Monday. The revelations on an additional al-Qaeda plot involving Reid were the most dramatic in a day of surprising and damaging testimony from Moussaoui.
Remember Pepsi-Cola’s attempt to re-enter South Africa 10 years ago? From booking its endorsement star Whitney Houston in a stadium where Coca-Cola owned marketing exclusivity to fielding rookie New Age Beverages against the formidable South African Breweries’ Amalgamated Beverage Industries, it was Pepsi’s bloodiest chapter in the history of the cola wars.
About a dozen veiled women, some with only their eyes visible, stare at a large flat screen flashing stock prices inside a female-only dealing room at the Dubai bourse.
Motivated by a desire to make some quick money, share their husbands’ passion for stocks or simply fill in time, many housewives in the United Arab Emirates have been lured into a bubbling stock market over the past year.
Harmony CEO Bernard Swanepoel has emerged as something of a consumer champion after his recent testimony against steel producer Mittal at the Competition Tribunal. "I’ve been flooded with letters of support from smaller businesses that cannot afford to pick a fight with Mittal because they are too intimidated," said Swanepoel.
Shortly before the first Gulf War the recently retired chairperson of the United States joint chiefs of staff, Admiral William Crowe, went for lunch with his successor, Colin Powell. In words that resonate today, Crowe warned Powell that ”a war in the Middle East … would set back the United States in the region for a long time”.
As one of Charles Taylor’s closest advisers warns of ”bloodshed and chaos” if the former Liberian president is extradited, analysts say the international community must act quickly to prevent his supporters from re-arming. Taylor, currently in exile in Nigeria, faces 17 counts of crimes against humanity brought by an internationally backed special court in Sierra Leone.
The Western Cape Department of Education will appoint 500 teaching assistants as part of its literacy and numeracy strategy. Children and teachers in the foundation phase are set to benefit from the pilot project, which aims to improve the reading and mathematics skills in the vital first years of formal schooling.
”I think I have discovered the clinching argument for closing the United Kingdom’s House of Lords. It is the presence in that chamber of a peer called Lady Jenny Tonge. Last week the baroness opened a debate about Botswana with an attack on the Gana and Gwi Bushmen of the Kalahari,” writes George Monbiot.