Readership of the online journals known as blogs (short for web logs) grew significantly in 2004, driven by increased awareness of them during the United States presidential campaign and other major news events, according to a study released on Sunday. Twenty-seven percent of online adults in the US said in November they read blogs.
I remember standing, in those last exile years, in the garden of the Jamaican ambassador to England, and witnessing a confrontation between Trevor Huddleston and Anthony Sampson. Why is this of any interest? Well, both of these very English Englishmen had been around in my life for as long as I could remember. Now they have both moved on—to a better world, some would say. Or to dust, just like Sophiatown, as others would have it.
”I am chatting on the phone with a friend. I tell him I have met this cool man from Cape Verde. ‘Tsk tsk tsk,” he goes. ‘There you go, joining the multiple-partner risk-group for Aids.’ ‘Thank you, Dr Killjoy,’ say I. ‘On political grounds, I refuse to toe the line of the American religious right and George W Bush.”’ A single woman may only have sex twice a year but she’ll still be lumped with high risk.
Anthony Sampson, who passed away recently, was a fine journalist and an award-winning author of several books dissecting Britain, the oil industry and the arms trade. He was also the editor of Drum magazine in the 1950s. And nearly 20 years ago, he played a crucial role in the survival of a new, fearless tabloid, The Weekly Mail (WM), the Mail & Guardian‘s forerunner.
At least two Cabinet ministers in Zimbabwe are suspected of passing official secrets to Western intelligence agencies seeking to spy on President Robert Mugabe’s government, the state <i>Sunday Mail</i> reported. Several officials are believed to have divulged confidential information to "hostile intelligence agencies".
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=BreakingNews-Africa&ao=177308">Zim ruling party shuns big names</a>
About 1,8-million survivors, mainly in Indonesia and Sri Lanka, are in need of food, says the United Nations. Help is likely to reach those in Sri Lanka within three days but an estimated one-million Indonesians may have to wait much longer, warn officials.
The star witness against the son of the former British prime minister, Mark Thatcher, has revealed the most detailed allegations yet of his role in a West African coup attempt, including claims that he helped test a helicopter for the operation. Coup pilot Crause Steyl has testified about a string of meetings involving Thatcher as an ”investor”.
The US is preparing to hold terrorism suspects indefinitely without trial, replacing the Guantanamo Bay prison camp with permanent prisons in the Cuban enclave. The new prisons are intended for captives the Pentagon and the CIA suspect of terrorist links but do not wish to set free or put on trial for lack of evidence.
The United Nations on Sunday warned that huge promises of aid from rich countries to the Asia tsunami crisis might not be fulfilled as some countries use dubious methods to appear more generous than they really are.
In his New Year’s message, President Thabo Mbeki has taken note of South Africa’s good economic performance in the past year and says the country has established itself "as one of the best-performing economies in the world". "We are therefore well set to achieve new successes in the new year," he said.