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/ 3 February 2006
In this new landscape, everyone is in the dark. After Hamas won an enormous victory that shocked even them, all the players in the Middle East conflict are stumbling around, unsure how to negotiate the new terrain. No one knows quite what to do.
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/ 3 February 2006
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) will press Zimbabwe to privatise its ailing parastatals that have been ”bleeding the fiscus”, according to sources who met with the global lender in Harare recently. ”The IMF wants the government to sell its stake in the parastatals to finance its social services,” the sources told the Mail & Guardian.
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/ 3 February 2006
An Egyptian ferry with about 1 400 people on board has disappeared from radar screens in the Red Sea off the Saudi coast, Egyptian maritime officials said on Friday. Helicopters have spotted bodies floating on the sea and one lifeboat carrying three people in the vicinity of where the ship was last seen on radar screens, officials said.
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/ 3 February 2006
”In today’s ‘supersize me’ consumer society, here is the paradox. Men need bigger cocks, and a penis of any size is now physically possible. Consequently, no size is ever going to be big enough. I was interested in seeing where this male preoccupation/neurosis with penis size has taken us,” writes Jacques Peretti.
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/ 3 February 2006
In Zimbabwe’s capital and in need of a bath or a hot meal? Call a friend, though it’ll likely take several attempts to get through. Power and water outages have revived friendships and socialising in Zimbabwe, homeowners say. People see more of each other during outages that last several days, says businessman James Martin.
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/ 2 February 2006
South African Airways obtained an interim Labour Court order on Thursday against a sympathy strike by the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union. Spokesperson Jacqui O’ Sullivan said the order would remain in place until final judgement next Tuesday.
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/ 2 February 2006
Two-thirds of South Africans believe the country is going in the right direction and nearly 80% are satisfied with the performance of President Thabo Mbeki, a survey revealed on Thursday. Only slightly more than four out of every 10 think Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka is doing good work.
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/ 2 February 2006
The head of the Coptic Orthodox Church, the oldest of African churches, is scheduled to visit South Africa for four days next week. ”His Holiness Pope Shenouda III, Pope of Alexandria and Patriarch of the See of Saint Mark … is the only African Pope and 117th in the Apostolic succession of Saint Mark,” the Egyptian embassy said.
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/ 2 February 2006
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, formerly Russia’s richest man and fiercest critic of Vladimir Putin, may have a few million lying around and degrees in engineering and economics. But, in the icy Siberian prison where he has been sent to serve seven years for tax evasion and fraud, such airs and graces can’t save anyone from the drudgery of life as a budget tailor.