Last Sunday, just hours before Iraq’s Parliament extended the deadline for the new constitution, women’s rights advocates mounted an 11th-hour push to dilute the role of Islam and safeguard their freedoms. They mobilised in Baghdad to steel liberal and secular members of the drafting committee for a showdown against religious conservatives.
Australia is planning its biggest global recruitment drive since the ”£10 pom” campaign of the 1950s by trying to lure 20 000 skilled workers to the country with promises of shorter hours, a better climate and a lower cost of living. The government says there are shortages in many areas and that recruiting from abroad is the only way of shoring up key industries.
One of the quietest revolutions to have taken place in post-apartheid South Africa occured at a nondescript, isolated building in Gauteng’s Midrand. The Development Bank of Southern Africa, under the stewardship of CEO Mandla Gantsho, has done more than just change the way it does business.
Africa must urgently boost investments in aquaculture to fight hunger as natural fish stocks on the continent and elsewhere decline, scientists say. Africa is the only region in the world where the per capita fish consumption is dropping, placing an estimated 200-million Africans who depend on fish as a main part of their diet at risk of malnutrition.
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The bulk carrier stranded on the coast near East London and her heavy cargo are causing concern as bad weather hampers the removal of potentially hazardous logs. The hull of the Kiperousa is already showing cracks and breaking up while salvors go about the ”slow, risky business” of removing the logs from the hull.
Sri Lanka’s slain minister of foreign affairs Lakshman Kadirgamar, a Tamil himself, was a fierce foe of Tamil Tiger rebels. Snipers gunned down Kadirgamar, whom the rebels dubbed a traitor to their cause of seeking a separate homeland, at his home late on Friday.
Iraq’s much-awaited draft Constitution is ready and will be presented to Parliament later on Monday, top Shi’ite negotiator Jawad al-Maliki said. Negotiations on Iraq’s first post-Saddam Hussein Constitution have been dogged for weeks by thorny issues revolving around federalism, sharing of oil revenues and the role of Islam in lawmaking.
Robert A Moog, whose self-named synthesisers turned electric currents into sound and opened the musical wave that became electronica, has died. He was 71. Moog died on Sunday at his home in Asheville, according to his company’s website. He had suffered from an inoperable brain tumour, detected in April.
Robert A Moog, whose self-named synthesisers turned electric currents into sound and opened the musical wave that became electronica, has died. He was 71. Moog died on Sunday at his home in Asheville, according to his company’s website. He had suffered from an inoperable brain tumour, detected in April.