When Qiu Chengwei reported the theft of his ”dragon sabre”, he was laughed out of the police station. So the 41-year-old online games player decided to take matters into his own hands. Swapping virtual weapons for a real knife, he tracked down the man who had robbed him of his prized fantasy possession and stabbed him to death.
A final analysis of the intelligence fiasco over Iraq’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction (WMD) will on Thursday focus blame on the CIA and other spy agencies, largely clearing the White House and the Pentagon of allegations that they shaped the intelligence to justify the invasion, according to early accounts of the report.
The once-thriving Indonesian town of Gunungsitoli was eerily quiet and forlorn early on Thursday as supply ships brought much-needed aid to survivors from this week’s earthquake, believed to have killed at least 1 000 people. One major problem for the relief workers is finding fresh water and food for the survivors.
It was carnage on a scale the ice floes of Newfoundland have not seen for more than half a century. The cull started in the morning, with more than 70 boats disgorging hundreds of seal hunters on to the ice. By the end of the day, more than 15 000 harp-seal cubs, most less than six weeks old, lay dead, clubbed to death and skinned.
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President Robert Mugabe defiantly predicted ”a mountainous victory” for his party on Wednesday night as Zimbabweans prepared to cast their votes in an election that most observers believe will be rigged. ”We have never been losers, because we have always been a party of the people,” Mugabe said.
<img src="http://www.mg.co.za/ContentImages/199502/Zim_icon.GIF" align=left>Birgit Kidd is having lunch with her torturer. The 60-year-old still bears scars from the attack by agents of the Central Intelligence Organisation, the feared Zimbabwean security police, last year. Despite a dislocated shoulder, cuts requiring 16 stitches, and severe bruising to her knee, the diminutive blonde activist has not been cowed into submission.
<img src="http://www.mg.co.za/ContentImages/199502/Zim_icon.GIF" align=left>Zimbabwe’s last parliamentary election, held in 2000, transfixed the attention of the international community. A substantial number of column inches were devoted to the campaign of farm occupations and human rights abuses that preceded the ballot — and the allegations of vote rigging that followed. Now, the Southern African country is going to the polls for its next legislative election, on Thursday.
South Africa’s robust economic growth made a small, hardly noticeable dent in the country’s massive unemployment rate. Yet those who are lucky enough to be employed in the formal sector saw earnings increase faster than the number of their peers. The latest figures show youth unemployment remains chronically high, while 60% of discouraged work seekers are female.
In the midst of our middle-class economic boom it is easy to delude ourselves that other South Africans are thriving. The Reserve Bank’s quarterly bulletin will no doubt fuel the optimistic view of a country poised for "unprecedented" growth and prosperity. If that is true, that is good news. But other developments on the employment front suggest there is no reason to celebrate yet.
Bantu Holomisa, the president of the United Democratic Movement, has fired arrows laced with poisonous words at the Timbavati Private Nature Reserve. He has accused the reserve of killing the Kruger National Park’s wildlife. But the TPNR’s management is convinced of the reserve’s innocence and is fighting back, even threatening legal action.