The conviction of Edgar Ray Killen for the manslaughter of three civil rights workers has a symbolic significance that goes beyond the families of those who died 41 years ago. At stake was not just how Killen would spend his fading years, but whether Mississippi could, and should, address its segregationist past.
The new French Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin, has declared he will start to tackle France’s unemployment problem within his first 100 days in office. Joblessness, he told his compatriots, is the ”true French disease”. That is self-evident, but De Villepin’s frankness shows that the recognition of the problem is becoming more and more widespread
The seven siblings scamper around the second-storey room in the Liberian capital, veering dangerously close to where the wall should be. One foot wrong and it’s a 20m drop onto a traffic-clogged road. Aside from keeping a beady eye on her children, their mother Josephine also has to feed the entire family on less than a dollar a day.
As pressure mounts in the United States for ethically produced chocolate, Cote d’Ivoire, the world’s top cocoa producer, is working hard to roll back the use of child labour in its family-owned plantations. Just days before the world’s chocolate industry outlines a global plan to combat child labour on July 1.
Lance Armstrong has shaken off a crash in his preparation for this Saturday’s first stage of the Tour de France, a 19km time trial, and appears ready for his bid to win a seventh consecutive yellow jersey on what will be his retirement race. His main rivals, however, have declared however that they don’t plan on giving him an easy time of it.
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The DA’s alternative ”People’s Assembly” held at Parliament on Monday appears to have highlighted growing resentment against the ANC in some sections of the coloured community. The DA, and most other opposition parties, boycotted the official 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Freedom Charter at Kliptown.
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Former head of the Special Investigation Unit, Judge Willem Heath announced that he will act as a legal advisor to former deputy president Jacob Zuma in his corruption trial. The former judge was previously tasked with investigating corruption into the government’s controversial R43-billion arms deal.
It has emerged that Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang held a private one-on-one meeting with controversial vitamin entrepreneur Mathias Rath earlier this year. In reply to a Democratic Alliance question in Parliament, Tshabalala-Msimang also refused to distance herself from Rath’s claims about his vitamins curing Aids.
The International Monetary Fund on Monday urged Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s authoritarian government to change policy tack and come in from the international cold to avert economic disaster. The IMF stressed that Zimbabwe needs ”decisive action” to lower its fiscal deficit, tighten monetary policy and set up a market-based currency system.