<b>MOVIE OF THE WEEK:</b> <i>Paradise Now</i> presents the human face of suicide bombers. While it makes no apologies for being firmly rooted in a Palestinian vantage point, it wisely avoids the self-righteous pontification, writes Kwanele Sosibo.
Scheduled to begin filming in June, <i>Suicide Bomber</i>, a Hindi movie, revisits the London bombings of 2005. Bollywood filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt is striving to portray "Islam as a religion of peace and not dreadful as it is perceived by the world."
A new chord sounded this week in the abandoned <b>Buchardi church</b> in Halberstadt, eastern Germany — the venue for a mind-boggling 639-year-long performance of a piece of music by American experimental composer John Cage.
Unthinkable only four years ago under the fundamentalist Islamic rule of the ousted Taliban regime that banned music and television, <i>Afghan Star</i> — a spin-off of the West’s <i>Pop Idols</i> — has taken Afghanistan television viewers by storm, writes Emmanuel Duparcq.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was rushed back to the operating theatre on Friday for emergency surgery to stop fresh bleeding in his brain as the country braced for the end of the Sharon era. Sharon, who has been prime minister since February 2001, was admitted to the hospital on Wednesday, little more than two weeks after he suffered a minor stroke.
Hundreds of Capetonians face 2006 homeless following fires in the Masiphumelele neighbourhood in the South Peninsula last week. Among them, undoubtedly, are schoolchildren who may now enter their new classes without uniforms, books and possibly without even school fees, let alone somewhere to study and sleep and eat.
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) on Friday called for urgent humanitarian assistance for the Horn of Africa region where recent droughts and ongoing conflicts have left millions facing possible famine. More than 11-million people in Somalia, Kenya, Djibouti and Ethiopia are in need of aid, the FAO said in a special alert issued in Rome.
Nigeria plans to free about 25 000 inmates, many of whom have been awaiting trial for years, in a bid to decongest overcrowded and unhygienic prisons and improve its human rights record. "The issue of awaiting-trial inmates has become an endemic problem in Nigeria," said Justice Minister Bayo Ojo.
Zimbabwe’s ability to fulfil its Test programme against the West Indies looks increasingly in doubt because of an ongoing strike by players demanding the dismissal of the country’s two leading cricket officials. The 37 striking cricketers are holding out for the removal of Zimbabwe Cricket chairperson Peter Chingoka and managing director Osias Bvute, who are accused of dubious financial dealings.
The leader of Britain’s second opposition party was fighting for his political life on Friday after an unprecedented admission that he has been battling alcoholism, at a time of fierce wider public debate over the use and abuse of alcohol. Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy (46) had repeatedly denied health problems despite some eyebrow-raising public appearances and media rumours.