Having waged a long and largely successful war against its prolific graffiti artists, New York is seeking to disarm the city’s hold-out "spray-painting punks" once and for all. Since January 1, a raft of new restrictions have come into force, including raising from 18 to 21 the age at which it is legal to possess "graffiti instruments".
United States software engineers have been called in to help in the search for an actor to play the role of Lord Buddha in a major Indian movie, a report said on Monday. Engineers in Silicon Valley have generated computer images of the Buddha which will be used in the global hunt for an actor to play the lead in the $120-million film by acclaimed Indian director Shekhar Kapur.
Scottish teenager Andy Murray won his first-round match at the 000 Heineken Open on Monday but stirred controversy by saying he and his opponent had ”played like women”. Spectators booed loudly when Murray said ”we were both playing like women” in a first set in which there were seven breaks of serve.
The new year may be just a few days old, but it has already presented Côte d’Ivoire’s new Prime Minister, Charles Konan Banny, with a substantial challenge: how best to deal with the attack staged on Monday on Akouedo military base in the east of the financial capital, Abidjan.
Fast-evolving technologies and shifting family dynamics are forcing a rethink on furniture designers. Armed with new and surprising materials such as concrete, these designers are aiming to restyle our homes. The explosion of the latest must-have gadgets such as flat-screen televisions and home cinemas has raised the tricky question of just where we should put them.
A strong undersea earthquake measuring 6,9 on the Richter scale rocked southern Greece on Sunday, according to the Athens observatory, causing at least two injuries and property damage. The quake struck at 1.34pm local time between the islands of Kythira and Crete about 215km south of Athens.
President Thabo Mbeki launched the African National Congress’s election campaign in Cape Town on Sunday with promises of cleaner, more responsive and effective local government. The president repeated the promises in the ANC’s election manifesto, which was also launched at the rally attended by about 25 000 people.
The government of Chad said on Saturday it has taken note of the decision by the World Bank to suspend loan payments, but called for reconsideration and said it is ready to continue talks. The bank has suspended payments to Chad in response to the African country’s modification of a bank-mandated law governing the use of its oil wealth.
An Egyptian youth who may have been a drug dealer can thank Islamic law he was ”sleeping on the job”, because that got him off charges of drug possession, the Akhbar al-Yom daily reported on Saturday. The unnamed 25-year-old was freed by a criminal court in Damanhur, near Cairo.
Heinrich Harrer, an Austrian mountaineer and writer with a Nazi past who fled a British prisoner-of-war camp in India for the northern Himalayas, where he befriended and tutored the Dalai Lama, died on Saturday. He was 93. Actor Brad Pitt played Harrer in the film Seven Years in Tibet.