Influenza has good PR for a disease that inflicts a six-figure death toll each year and, from time to time, leaps out to become a mass killer that claims even more lives than Aids. Flu is typecast as a bad case of the snuffles — high fever, wheezing and coughing, a few days in bed and a couple more days convalescing, and everything starts to get back to normal. But this is not the diagnosis for all.
The heroine of Robert Doisneau’s Baiser de l’Hôtel de Ville, the archetypal photograph of Paris’s most archetypal open-air activity, has decided to sell her original print at auction half a century after it was taken. Françoise Bornet, who performed the kiss with her real-life then boyfriend, Jacques Carteaud, 55 years ago, said the print would go under the hammer on August 25.
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Donor countries have pledged to give ,5-billion over the next two years to cover Sudan’s humanitarian and reconstruction needs, organisers of a 60-nation conference said on Tuesday. Before the Oslo meeting, organisers had hoped for promises totalling ,6-billion from the conference.
The Western Cape transport department is open to resolving the taxi conflict in the region amicably, provincial transport minister Mcebisi Skwatsha said on Tuesday. He was responding to a memorandum handed over after a march earlier in the day by disgruntled taxi operators and drivers.
A man armed with two knives pulled several schoolchildren off a public bus in a north-west German town on Tuesday and forced at least four of them into a nearby house. Police quickly surrounded the home. The mother of one of the children who escaped from the bus said the man told them he wants to bring his family to Germany from Iran.
It was one of those heartwarming Lassie moments. Lacey the golden Labrador survived a 30m fall down a cliff when her friend Sheena, a black Labrador, raised the alarm, coast guards in Wales said on Tuesday. Lacey became trapped after slipping down a rocky slope near South Stack, in Holyhead, north Wales, on Monday.
The Tshwane Metropolitan Council followed due process in registering the name Tshwane with the South African Geographical Names Council, says the body. Meanwhile, the Broadcasting Complaints Commission of South Africa found the South African Broadcasting Corporation has done nothing wrong by referring to the area as Tshwane in its bulletins.
Criminal charges are being laid against Johannesburg metro police who embarked on an illegal strike about overtime pay last week, metro police chief Chris Ngcobo said on Tuesday. Ngcobo made the announcement after the Johannesburg Labour Court on Tuesday confirmed as valid an interim interdict declaring the strike illegal.
Armed groups are still mistreating people in southern Sudan, despite January’s peace agreement between the government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army, a humanitarian group said on Monday. ”Civilians are subjected to excessive taxation when they enter and leave militia-held territory,” the group said.