When Wham! bounced on stage to play the first western pop concert in China, neither the Chinese nor George Michael knew quite how to behave. The 15 000-strong audience in 1985 were unsure how they were supposed to react to Michael’s strutting or his bouffant hairstyle.
Nearly 300 World War II veterans took a salute from South African National Defence Force chief of corporate services Lieutenant General Themba Matanzima on Sunday at a ceremony at the Rand Regiments’ Memorial in Johannesburg. The veterans, wearing their medals with jacket and tie, marched proudly by, to remember the end of the conflict exactly 60 years before.
Images of a flamboyantly curvaceous Anita Ekberg cavorting in the Fontana di Trevi in Rome have captivated film buffs the world over. But, according to three recent accounts, the most celebrated sequence in Federico Fellini’s 1960 La Dolce Vita was not just a product of the director’s imagination.
With less than two weeks to go to the May 15 Ethiopian parliamentary polls, at least 27 000 voters have to be re-registered after irregularities were found, which included 10-year-old children being registered to vote. In some areas, however, eligible voters were not even registered to take part in the election.
Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin and United States President George Bush endured one of the bitterest patches of their reputed friendship on Sunday when they made pointed criticisms of each other hours before a key meeting, and then papered over the cracks for the TV cameras.
There are many species of atheism, just as there are many species of religion. But while many religions still thrive, most of the atheisms that have ever existed are now extinct. The non-religious person today is like a person who wanders into a shop to buy a breakfast cereal and finds only one brand for sale. Moreover, this variety isn’t very tasty, because the kind of atheism that flourishes today is old and tired.
Peace returns but Guinea villagers have to wait longer for international aid. According to the finance ministry, millions of dollars’ worth of damage was inflicted in the course of fighting five years ago. The violence was prompted, in part, by a long-running dispute between Liberia and Guinea, which had allowed Liberian rebels to set up camp in its territory.
Many damaging accusations have been levelled at John Bolton, President George W Bush’s controversial nominee as United States ambassador to the United Nations. But perhaps the most serious is that Bolton, as Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security since 2001, bungled efforts to dissuade North Korea from developing nuclear weapons.
Mention the word policy and many scientists instinctively reach for their gun. The reality is that science needs policymakers as much as policymakers need science. The obvious reason is financial. Modern science is generally accepted as a public good — an activity that benefits all members of society, rather than selective groups — and, as a result, something that should be supported from the public purse.
Robert Zoellick is the archetypal United States government insider, a man with a brilliant technical mind but zero experience of any coalface or war front. Sliding effortlessly between Ivy League academia, the US Treasury and corporate boardrooms (including an advisory post with the scandalous Enron), his latest position is the number-two slot at the State Department.