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/ 17 December 2004
Sometimes two seemingly unrelated pieces of upcoming news reveal themselves to be part of one and the same iceberg. The film Kinsey, based on the life of the notorious sex researcher Alfred Kinsey, will open in South Africa early next year. This month saw a fast-track review by the Food and Drugs Administration of a testosterone patch that aims to improve the sex lives of menopausal women. The iceberg? The science of sex — or rather, the lack of science of sex.
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/ 17 December 2004
There are fears that the Great Lakes region could again descend into war. Rwandan President Paul Kagame has insisted that he will enter the Democratic Republic of Congo and attack Hutu fighters based there if Kinshasa and the United Nations fail to disarm the rebels. But whether rebels or refugees, many Rwandan Hutus are too afraid to return home.
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/ 17 December 2004
”Two weeks ago, my sister was raped coming home from school. How is my sister supposed to look at me and my brothers and not think of this man? How is she going to trust another man? At the tender age of 14, what picture will she have of men in general?” A policeman and and a brother tells of his anguish at gender violence.
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/ 17 December 2004
For more than a century, the emblem of a red cross on a white background has saved the lives of people in war zones across the globe. It has also acted as a badge of safety for those who wear it. But now the neutrality and independence of the Red Cross Red Crescent is fast becoming a casualty of a global war on terror that threatens to obliterate the capacity of humanitarian aid agencies to operate in areas of conflict.
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/ 17 December 2004
Two weeks ago, IBM agreed to sell its PC business to Lenovo, a Chinese company formerly known as Legend. However, there is no need for buyers to panic. In the short term — 18 months to three years — it should be business as usual. The next generation of ThinkPad portables should arrive on schedule, following the current roadmap. As for the long term — beyond five years — we can only wait and see.
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/ 17 December 2004
After three weeks of high-profile events, golf in South Africa now takes a break for the festive season. There is a qualifier for the (British) Open Championship at Atlantic Beach in Cape Town on January 13 and 14, but the season proper doesn’t resume until the 20th, which will give the players an opportunity to burn off Christmas excess.
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/ 17 December 2004
Sharif Omar has been waiting two years for the bulldozers, ever since Israel’s steel and barbed wire ”security fence” carved its way between his village and its land. Last week the excavators and diggers finally arrived on the outskirts of Jayyous to lay the foundations for an expansion of the nearby Jewish settlement of Zufim, fulfilling the fears and warnings of its Palestinian neighbours.
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/ 17 December 2004
One of Saddam Hussein’s most feared lieutenants, known as Chemical Ali for ordering gas attacks on Kurdish villages, will appear in court in Baghdad within days, an Iraqi minister said this week. According to Hazem Shaalan, the Defence Minister, Ali Hassan al-Majid will be in the dock next week to answer a string of charges for crimes against humanity. ”He will be the first to be tried,” he said.
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/ 17 December 2004
As a young man, Recep Tayyip Erdogan was a gifted footballer; but not quite good enough to turn professional. So he concentrated on politics instead. Now Erdogan is Prime Minister of Turkey. European Union leaders, who must make a decision on Turkey’s membership application at last week’s Brussels summit, may be wishing the skilful, determined Erdogan had stuck to football.
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/ 17 December 2004
The English cricket team’s media entourage has turned the tourists’ loss to South Africa A in Potchefstroom into some sort of cricketing Isandlwana. As flashbulbs popped under the bed this week, the subtexts screamed from between the lines of English broadsheets and websites.