A stone’s throw from the Eiffel Tower on the banks of the Seine, the final touches are being put to Europe’s newest museum, a huge project celebrating and bringing to life non-Western art and heritage. Named the Musee du Quai Branly after its location, the museum will house about 300Â 000 works of tribal art.
With its surging economy and a new middle class of about 300-million, the preference gap between air and train travel is matched by a growing divide between urban and rural people. India is still a predominantly agricultural country and a decade of growth has left half a billion people behind.
In a dilapidated maternity and paediatric hospital in Diwaniyah, 160km south of Baghdad, Zahara and Abbas, premature twins just two days old, lie desperately ill. The hospital has neither the equipment nor the drugs that could save their lives. On the other side of the world, in a federal courthouse in Virginia, United States, two men are found guilty of fraudulently obtaining -million intended for the reconstruction of Iraq.
”The value of legal protection for whistle-blowers was highlighted recently when Kenyan MP and anti-corruption campaigner John Githongo fled to Britain in fear of his life after going public with allegations that Kenyan ministers colluded in a -million corruption scam,” writes Teboho Makhalemele.
”Environmentalists — including South African National Parks (SANParks) who, as Fiona Macleod reported (‘Damned from the start’, February 3), is opposing the construction of a dam on the Steelpoort river near Jane Furse in Limpopo — are increasingly out of touch with reality,” writes Mike Muller.
Police are investigating whether someone spiked the drink of one of Australia’s gold-medal winning swimmers while she was celebrating her Commonwealth Games win in Melbourne, officials said on Monday. Joanna Fargus, who won the 200m backstroke event, began to feel dizzy and nauseous while out with teammates on Saturday night.
The Spanish have waited for a very long time to hear the announcement by ETA, the armed Basque separatist movement, that it is declaring a permanent ceasefire from March 24. This will be an extremely important milestone if it indeed marks the end of a 40-year campaign of terrorist violence that has left hundreds dead, many of them innocent civilians.
A joke does the rounds that Australians are so crazy about sport they’d bet on two flies crawling up the wall of an Outback outhouse. If it’s set for Melbourne, this line usually is appended: And thousands of people will turn up to watch. Australia’s domination of a fifth consecutive Commonwealth Games — winning a record 84 gold medals and 221 overall — was bookended by opening and closing ceremonies attracting 80 000-plus crowds,
The plight of British residents in Guantánamo Bay is to be heard on Capitol Hill — through the voices of actors. An updated version of the play Guantánamo: Honour Bound to Defend Freedom, is to be presented before members of the United States House of Representatives next month.
The country’s persistent power blackouts have produced an unexpected boom in sales of power generators and candles. ”There has been a massive increase,” says Leon Maas, sales manager for Johannesburg-based company Generator Logic. ”We used to quote a four-week delivery period, but now we’re saying eight to 12 weeks because of the demand.”