Touring the endless hallways and sweeping decks of the Queen Mary 2, you’ll find gleaming wood panelling, deep red carpeting and authentic Art Deco details. You’ll also find a hall of fame with larger-than-life, black-and-white photographs of some of the many stars who sailed on the ship’s predecessor, the Queen Mary: Buster Keaton. Bing Crosby. Charlie Chaplin. Elizabeth Taylor.
The art of lobbying is being perfected this week in the modernist marble interior of the Hilton hotel in Athens. The city’s magnificent Olympic stadium may be the focus of the world’s attention when the games of the 28th Olympiad open on Friday night, but the Hilton will be the real heart of the games.
He’s not yet advertising for a speechwriter, but Lemmer respectfully suggests that Oom Thabo seriously considers hiring someone with some talent along those lines. It might avoid the sort of stupendously pointless sound bite offered up to SAfm news as the prez congratulated South African women judges on the launch of the local chapter of the International Judges Association in Benoni on Monday.
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Zimbabwe’s Sports Minister, Aeneas Chigwedere, accused Britain on Wednesday of pressuring Greece into barring him from attending the Athens Olympics and described the decision as ”completely out of order”. EU member Greece announced on Tuesday it will bar Chigwedere from attending the Olympics.
Two trains collided head-on in north-western Turkey on Wednesday, killing six people and injuring about 30 others, an official said. Firefighters were trying to enter the first car of one of the trains to pull out passengers. The car was smashed and flipped over in the collision near the village of Tavsancil in Kocaeli province.
A man who once weighed more than 450kg has lost 144kg under the care of a team of doctors and hopes to lose 203kg more. Patrick Deuel (42) of Valentine, Nebraska, weighed 482kg when he was admitted to Sioux Falls’s Avera McKennan hospital eight weeks ago. Deuel is on a 1 200-calorie-a-day diet.
Four Russian doctors who were arrested as they tried to remove both kidneys from a critically injured but still living patient will stand trial for attempted murder, the Russian prosecutor’s office said on Wednesday. The doctors were planning to use the kidneys for transplantation.
National Assembly Speaker Baleka Mbete on Wednesday informed the African National Congress, the Democratic Alliance and the New National Party of the names of their MPs on the Scorpions’ preliminary list of 23 MPs allegedly linked to the parliamentary travel voucher scam. Only the DA was prepared to identify its MP.
Swiss authorities said on Wednesday that they have suspended all imports of poultry from South Africa indefinitely following the outbreak of bird flu in ostrich farms. Meanwhile, testing of ostriches for avian flu on Wednesday moved outside the quarantine area in the Eastern Cape where it was first detected.
Ostrich culling continues — in secret