A Finnish woman and her white Zimbabwean husband, both in their fifties, narrowly escaped with their lives on Monday after a savage beating by President Robert Mugabe’s youth militia using iron bars and rocks to try and force them out of the village they live in.
Fresh concern has been raised that the United States vice-president, Dick Cheney, may have played a role in the decision to award his former company Halliburton a -billion contract for work in postwar Iraq. According to a congressional investigation, Cheney’s top aide, Lewis Libby, was involved in high-level talks in October 2002 which led to the firm securing the contract.
Keeping bookshelves tidy is at the best of times a chore. But when the bookshelves stretch about 50 kilometres, it becomes something rather worse. Custodians of the Vatican library, fed up with having to spend a month a year putting wayward items from their collection of 1,6-million volumes and manuscripts back where they belong, are tagging them with microchips.
Jonathan Moyo, Zimbabwe’s information minister, denied on Monday that Robert Mugabe intended to nationalise all farmland, saying the policy only applied to plots seized from whites. His statement contradicted that of John Nkomo, the land reform and resettlement minister, who last week said the state would nationalise all agricultural land.
Zimbabwe, China and arms deals, new Iraq torture photos, George Dubya and Michael Moore, headbanging cats, tattoo ratings, what’s really in that hot dog you’re eating, free stuff to download and ways to annoy your public toilet stallmates … Ian Fraser unearths the weird and the wonderful and downright wacky right here on the web.
How actively do political parties implement sustainable development? Are their promises nothing but hot air? One of the simplest ways to gauge this in the immediate wake of the elections was to check what they planned to do with the thousands of electioneering posters and boards glaring down at voters from lamp-posts around the country.
These images were sent to <i>Earthyear</i> in March by a reader in Cape Town. They were taken by a friend’s husband while he was in Nigeria on business. Apparently the photographs were taken outside a bank in the Victoria Island business area of Lagos. If any of our readers can give us an explanation and / or contacts, please get in touch with <i>Earthyear</i>.
A common veterinary drug has likely exterminated almost all of Asia’s once-abundant vultures over the past few years, say the members of a prominent team of investigators. Scientists from around the world have been scurrying to determine why Asia’s vultures are disappearing.
Now that South African residents can invest overseas — within certain limits — you might think income or capital gains earned in far corners of the Earth will escape the South African Revenue Service’s searching eye. This gleaming idea may be dangerous for your financial health, suggests a recent edition of PriceWaterhouseCooper’s <i>Synopsis</i> newsletter.
Trade unions often complain that radio stations do not give them fair coverage, but now a new labour radio slot will ensure that they share their experiences and exchange views on air. The Labour Community Radio Project is a weekly one-hour radio programme broadcast on community stations that talks about the challenges workers face in their daily lives, and ways to address them.