As Indonesians struggled to recover from the second deadly earthquake to strike them in three months, an Australian expert warned on Friday that the country faces the prospect of a ”super volcano” eruption that would dwarf all previous catastrophes. The world’s biggest super volcano is Lake Toba, on Indonesia’s island of Sumatra.
Sold for a song: The fast-food giant McDonald’s is reported to be launching a campaign that will offer financial incentives to rap artists who mention its Big Mac burger in their lyrics. Richard Jinman reports.
Most listeners would be reluctant to call the Real Estate Agents hip-hop, as their press release tries to sell them. Their sound is harder, more asynchronous, than the commercially sold sound. The Agents are turning the tables, writes Nadine Botha.
Chinese censors have banned Serve the People, named after Mao’s most famous slogan, saying ”This novella slanders Mao Zedong, the army, and is overflowing with sex.” Jonathan Watts reports from Beijing .
Terri Schiavo, the severely brain-damaged woman whose condition sparked an epic legal, medical and political battle that has gripped the United States, died on Thursday, 13 days after her feeding tube was removed. Both US President George Bush and the Vatican expressed their concern at the circumstances of Schiavo’s death.
Father and son mining magnates Brett and Roger Kebble will appeal to the Constitutional Court after the Supreme Court of Appeal struck from the roll their application on seven share-price manipulation charges. The Kebbles argued that some of the charges they faced were civil and not criminal offences.
Until recently Mr Smith had a microscopic penis. As he browsed bookshops for biographies of Napoleon it cowered in the draperies of his underwear, an embryonic chipolata, a coy love-prawn. Mrs Smith tried to reassure him, but he was certain that the harpies at her depraved book-club gatherings talked of nothing else, crooking little fingers and revelling in his genetic betrayal.
One of South Africa’s most senior judges, KwaZulu-Natal Judge President Vuka Tshabalala, has warned that some judges will consider returning to private practice if the government’s proposed Bills aimed at reining in errant judges becomes law.
Judge Tshabalala told the <i>Mail & Guardian</i> that colleagues told him they would quit the Bench if the draft laws were enacted in their current form.
An alliance of United Kingdom MPs, human rights groups and survivors of the conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan on Thursday launched a campaign for bolder international intervention to stop the bloodshed. The alliance is calling for the United Nations to authorise peace-enforcement operations to be led by African Union troops.
The board of the World Bank on Thursday approved the controversial nomination of Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld’s deputy at the Pentagon, as its new president.
Wolfowitz was assured of board approval after he won over European diplomats during a five-hour charm offensive in Brussels on Wednesday.