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/ 3 February 2006
Abducting oil workers for ransom has become so common in Nigeria that beer mats in expatriate bars read, "Eat a lot — fat people are harder to kidnap". But for the four foreign hostages released unharmed earlier this week, the ordeal was no laughing matter. The group succumbed to malaria and was held for three weeks.
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/ 3 February 2006
The manne would like to congratulate African National Congress Youth League President Fikile Beebopaloola on his unanimous re-election as President of the International Union of Socialist Youth at its congress in Denmark a fortnight ago. They would also like to ask him if this august appointment is what’s persuaded him to start using the royal plural in his online briefies.
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/ 3 February 2006
South African homeowners are rushing to get a free property evaluation courtesy of a new online automated valuation website.Jose Rodrigues, MD of Cerno Cubed, the company behind the website, says the Real Estate Evaluation Portal is one of the most popular websites in South Africa.
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/ 3 February 2006
How easily we forget what makes the present. In the current conflict between Ashwin Desai and Malegapuru Makgoba, old angers take their revenge under cover of procedural technicalities and formal institutional codes. Ten years ago, a similar fight was unfolding at the University of Witwatersrand. Only then, Makgoba was under attack.
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/ 3 February 2006
As revelations about a multimillion-dollar scam involving the Anglo Leasing and Finance company riveted public attention in Kenya , a report about investigations into the country’s biggest corruption scandal to date was gathering dust in an office at State House.
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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.