In southern Helmand province, one of the main sources of the world’s opium and heroin, turbaned men fit stones into a cobbled road that is meant to lead them away from growing drugs. Crouching, they peer up at a convoy of armoured vehicles and gun-toting American soldiers that rumbles along the first such road in southern Afghanistan, the most dangerous part of this violent land.
Can it be true that what you wear on your feet can improve your health, weight, posture, muscle tone and circulation, as the various manufacturers assert? Perhaps the most famous among this modern breed are the R 1Â 446 Masai Barefoot Technology trainers, worn by Cherie Blair, Jemima Khan and all over by mummies intent on maintaining their yumminess.
Grace Chidanyika (39) is a mother of three girls, two of whom are in school and very bright. One’s dream is to become a lawyer, while the other hopes to be a banker. As the children talk about their dreams, their mother’s eyes cloud with tears as she wonders how she is going to raise the money for their tuition fees.
Mexico City is developing one of the world’s most pressing environmental problems. In the metropolis of 20-million people, rivers of sewage flow slowly through many of its poor neighbourhoods, it loses 40% to 50% of all its water supplies in leaks and 100 cubic metres of hard-to-dispose waste is generated every second.
Most of this week’s comment on Slobodan Milosevic’s death asserted that he thus cheated justice, escaping an inevitable verdict of guilt at the Hague international court. There is an alternative view, however, that Milosevic’s exit enables justice to escape a hideous embarrassment. The prisoner was likely to be acquitted on a substantial number of the charges against him.
When Irina Khakamada, the femme fatale of Russia’s political opposition, decided to run against Vladimir Putin in the presidential election in March 2004, she asked a Russian public relations firm how she should ”project her brand”. A five-hour brainstorming session yielded only one sure-fire strategy: stage the kidnapping of your husband and child.
South African javelin thrower Sunette Viljoen got the country’s track and field campaign off to a dream start by winning her event while Natalie du Toit added a second gold medal to her tally at the Commonwealth Games on Sunday. Competing in front of over 67 000 predominantly Australian athletics fans, Viljoen showed big match temperament in producing a second competition throw of 60,72m.
After wriggling its way through every possible excuse for inaction, the United Kingdom’s Office of Fair Trading (OFT) launched an inquiry into the behaviour of the big grocery chains. It’s about time. But alongside it we need another one: into whether the OFT has itself been taken over by the superstores.
Like Cinderella transformed from a princess at the stroke of midnight, Moroka Swallows shed their poise and glitter in the second half of the Premier League against Kaizer Chiefs at FNB Stadium on Saturday night –yet ultimately deserved a share of the spoils from a tense, changeable 1-1 draw
Steamy footage of KwaZulu-Natal Tourism MEC Narend Singh with a married Durban socialite was not in the public interest, Singh said in a statement on Sunday. ”I am most concerned by the recent publications in the media involving myself which relates to a personal and private matter, and in respect of which I have not waived any of my rights to privacy.