Necessity is the mother of invention and this is especially true when it comes to party people. A new innovation being launched at the Glastonbury rock music festival will allow revellers to party right through the night without disturbing the neighbours.
Hong Kong prostitutes are using cellular technology to entice clients. Using automated voice messages, they have been sending prospective clients information, such as their addresses and phone numbers. "Our girls are only doing it part-time but you will like them," one message reads.
Michael Jackson suffered a serious setback in his attempt to fend off charges of child molestation on Monday when a California judge ruled that evidence of prior allegations could be considered at the pop star’s trial. The Santa Barbara county prosecutor said he intends to present evidence relating to five previous child accusers.
Leading secular and liberal groups have launched a counter-attack against what they say is the undue influence of hardline Shia Islamists and Iran’s theocracy on the formation of Iraq’s new government. Talks between the main Kurdish and Shia blocs over a coalition government have also taken a knock.
Survivors of the Boxing Day tsunami fled their homes on Monday night after a huge undersea earthquake measuring up to 8,7 on the Richter scale struck off the coast of Sumatra, with as many as 2 000 people feared dead on the Indonesian island of Nias, close to its epicentre.
Domestic employers, seasonal employers, farmers and their workers contributed R40,9-million to the Unemployment Insurance Fund during the 2003/04 financial year, according to Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana. This figure has already jumped to R68-million for the categories of employers and workers in the period from April 1, 2004 to January 31, 2005.
The custom of paying a bride price — referred to in Swaziland as lobola — is a longstanding tradition in this Southern African country, which is also home to Africa’s last absolute monarchy. But changing times and social trends are bringing the custom into question — among men as well as women.
Walking in the eerie darkness engulfing Noah’s Ark, a centre that children in northern Uganda escape to for fear of being kidnapped by the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), it is easy to see why so many in the region are eager for peace. Although a handful of the several hundred children who gather here every night are now singing sweetly for a group of visitors, the 19-year battle between government and the LRA has scarred their lives.
This is a tale of one war, two anniversaries, three different demonstrations — and inconsistencies, contradictions and civilian deaths that are too numerous to count. On April 18 2003, tens of thousands of Sunni and Shia protesters took to the streets of Baghdad to call for the Americans to leave Iraq. Two years later, the United States is still there, justifying occupation by embracing the irrelevant and ignoring the inconvenient.
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It was early evening when I arrived, and my parents were locking their front gate. There were uniformed guards on the perimeter, and I saw the fence around their house had been electrified in the past year. ”We’ve just been to a farewell,” my mother laughed. ”Soon we’ll be the only ones left!” She meant the only whites left, although leaving Zimbabwe goes both ways these days: three million of us now live outside the country.