The newly elected leader of Israel’s Labour party, Amir Peretz, is so attached to his trademark walrus moustache that he refuses to shave it off … unless the facial hair issue is put to a referendum. "This trademark doesn’t just belong to me any more. It is no longer my personal property. It is public property," he said.

In a rather flaky piece on Noam Chomsky, headlined "Chomsky: As flaky as the next man", reprinted from the London <i>Guardian</i> in these pages last week, someone called Emma Brockes clearly sets out to take issue with the great Guru of the Left’s anointment as the w orld’s greatest public intellectual by an interesting British journal called <i>Prospect</i>.

There has been vigorous debate since democratisation about the best economic way forward. An idea expressed by people in business and the government is that labour-intensive production in South Africa cannot compete with developing economies in the East.

An uneasy calm holds in Addis Ababa this week as Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi feels the weight of his triple-decker troubles. The death toll from a week of violent demonstrations in the capital against the alleged rigging of elections nearly six months ago approaches 50. The opposition has called for a week-long strike and the police presence in the city has been increased dramatically.