In the crowded wards of African hospitals, coughs and bony bodies tell the story of a deadly return. Tuberculosis (TB), supposedly defeated 40 years ago, is back, riding on the Aids epidemic, and the world is ill-prepared, says the relief agency Médécins sans Frontières (MSF). TB kills two million people every year, nearly all in developing countries. Yet TB is curable.
Scorecards, compactly final, insist that cricket matches are singular events. Results imply a beginning, a middle and an end. Match reports enforce closure. Test matches begin (the dailies imply) in order to finish. But the weekly commentator, cut adrift from this headlong rush, has the opportunity to play truant.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon warned Jewish settlers on Wednesday that he will use all the government’s power against anyone who resists his planned withdrawal from Gaza and the granting of a token part of the West Bank. His comment came after an angry confrontation between settlers and the Israeli army in which the police helped to remove two settler outposts at Shalhevet in the hard line Yizhar settlement on the West Bank.
The world looks beautiful from the summit of the Premier Soccer League table for Orlando Pirates as they survey all around them at this stage of the season. For Pirates, their 13-game unbeaten run in the Premier Soccer League has raised hopes of wrestling the championship title from arch-rivals Kaizer Chiefs.
As the clear-up from the Asian tsunami starts and the full damage is assessed, there is growing consensus among scientists, environmentalists and Asian fishing communities that the impact was considerably worsened by tourist, shrimp farm and other industrial developments that have destroyed or degraded mangrove forests and other natural sea defences.
The Football League has volunteered to be used as a ”guinea pig” for goal line technology that, if successful, could be implemented throughout the world. Rather than video evidence, the scheme would involve using a specially created ball fitted with a microchip that bleeps whenever it crosses the line.
There cannot be many babies named after disasters, but then there cannot be many babies that nature has thrown so totally on the comfort of strangers as 20-day-old Wave. In his short life, the Thai boy has escaped a tsunami that appears to have killed his parents and the poverty that forced his carer to abandon him three days later.
In Agege, a suburb of Nigeria’s commercial hub, Lagos, Augusta Uyi-Evbuomwam has become indispensable. From dawn until dusk, people carrying buckets and jerry cans queue to buy water from her borehole. Uyi-Evbuomwam claims she dare not close shop for even a day, as the entire neighbourhood would be left without water. ”It is more than a business, it is a service. People are begging me to sell water to them,” she says.
”As preparations for the grand prix season get under way, allegations that Bernie Ecclestone treats formula one like his personal Scalextric set are confirmed when he forgets to pack away all the drivers and his mother hoovers up Juan Pablo Montoya.” Harry Pearson gazes into his crystal ball and decides what won’t happen in sport this year.
Premiership managers are fending off agents as the amount of business done during the current transfer window struggles to match the speculation. It feels quite like old times. The papers suddenly look more like themselves, and the court circular of King Lear, as they muse on who is in and who is out.