The modern phrase for a moment of realisation that a lifestyle is out of control is ”wake-up call”. So linguists as well as counsellors will be interested in the fact that the actor Russell Crowe has experienced a behavioural watershed that actually involves a telephone in a hotel room.
Participants at the second national Aids conference that ended in Durban on Friday have hailed the event as a huge success. Professor Jerry Coovadia, from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, said the conference was proof that South Africa was really a democracy because of the solidarity between academics, non-governmental organisations as well as the young and old.
Two employees of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) kidnapped in Ituri in the northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo are in good health but are still being held hostage, the organisation said on Friday. MSF ”again appeals for the immediate and unconditional liberation of its co-workers and is concerned about this prolonged captivity”, it said in a statement.
Police fought running battles on Saturday with supporters of a strike called to protest against the forced eviction of slum dwellers in Zimbabwe. Riot police fired tear gas at protesters in the Chitungwiza township south of the capital, Harare, according to one of the strike organisers.
Eighteen of the world’s poorest countries will have their debts to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund wiped out as part of a -billion package agreed on Saturday by the G7 leading economies. The deal, brokered by the British Chancellor Gordon Brown, will save countries such as Mozambique and Ethiopia a total of -billion in debt payments over the next 10 years.
For Buford Posey, a white man raised in Philadelphia, Mississippi, World War II had a civilising influence. ”When I was coming up in Mississippi I never knew it was against the law to kill a black man,” he says. ”I learned that when I went in the army. I was 17 years old. When they told me I thought they were joking.”
It is one of the world’s most baffling puzzles, the bane of professional cryptologists and amateur sleuths who have spent 15 years trying to solve it. But the race to find the secrets of Kryptos, a sculpture inside a courtyard at the CIA’s heavily guarded headquarters in Langley, Virginia, may be reaching a climax.
Uganda’s Constitutional Court on Friday rejected an appeal by death-row inmates to outlaw capital punishment, but ruled that laws requiring the imposition of the sentence are illegal and must be rewritten. More than 400 death-row inmates brought their unprecedented appeal to the Constitutional Court in January.
President Thabo Mbeki has assured incoming Chief Justice Pius Langa and his deputy, Judge Dikgang Moseneke, of the African National Congress’s commitment to judicial independence. ”We will, in word and deed, respect their right and duty to carry out their tasks as part of an independent judiciary,” he said on Friday.
A spam e-mail that claims Michael Jackson has made a suicide attempt masks a ”Trojan horse” virus that infects computers, a British-headquartered software security firm said on Friday. The e-mail says Jackson made a ”suicidal aattempt” (sic) and invites the recipient to click on a link to see a supposed suicide note.