The weekend carnage in Khobar came less than a month after Saudi Arabia vowed to ”strike with an iron fist” against militants who carried out attacks and said it was making every effort to protect foreigners in the kingdom. ”The government is doing all it can to protect all residents,” Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal told a news conference. Such assurances have been heard before and will no doubt be heard again.
Minister of Sport and Recreation Makhenkesi Stofile has scrapped racial quotas for teams, saying they have not helped to accelerate the transformation of sports codes, which are currently not representative of the people of South Africa But national teams will remain lily-white unless selectors and coaches are put under
pressure, writes Rapule Tabane.
Curled in a chair in his hotel suite in Glasgow, the Dalai Lama was asked what he might have said to British Prime Minister Tony Blair had he been invited to Downing Street during his visit to the United Kingdom. Leaning forward, he chuckled: ”Nothing in particular.” Despite the fury of his followers that the prime minister refused a request to meet him, he insisted it made little difference to him whether he got to see Blair or not.
Headline writers called it his endgame. Robert Mugabe was bunkered in his mansion while opponents shut down the country with a general strike dubbed ”the final push”. Soldiers placed steel barrels outside the presidential gates in case of mobs, but there was nothing they could do to protect Zimbabwe’s leader from a crumbling economy.
Humans have done so much damage to the atmosphere that even if they stop burning all fossil fuels immediately, they risk leaving an impoverished Earth for their descendants, an eminent scientist said this week. Professor James Lovelock, who detected the build-up of ozone- destroying CFCs and formulated the Gaia theory, told a conference in Britain this week: ”We have not yet awakened to the seriousness of global warming.”
Iraq’s interim Foreign Minister, Hoshiyar Zebari, flew to New York on Wednesday night, determined to press the United Nations Security Council for ”as much sovereignty as possible” during talks on Thursday over a new draft resolution. The United States-British proposal, revealed on Tuesday, is designed to underpin the country’s transition from occupation to independence.
Sixty years ago the vanguard of Pax Americana waded and crawled through pink swells on to Omaha beach, and Britannia’s 300-year rule of the waves was emphatically over. Given the reverberations of June 6 this year, it seemed somehow spiteful of the American Professional Cricket organisation to announce its birth this week.
In the end it was the nimble, canine legs of Simply Fabulous outpacing the sturdy, equine legs of Tiny Tim that helped settle one of the most heated debates within the racing fraternity. Racehorse or greyhound, which is the fastest? For anyone looking for a sporting upset then Kempton Park racetrack was the place to be on Wednesday.
French Open finalist Anastasia Myskina believes the years of sacrifice when she was growing up in Moscow have finally paid off as she prepares to take on compatriot Elena Dementieva for the supreme clay-court title on Saturday. She recalls her childhood spent training with lifelong friend Dementieva at the Spartak club.
The Olympic torch began its five-continent voyage 70 days before the Athens Olympics opening ceremony in Sydney on Friday with Cathy Freeman setting off on the Australian leg of the relay. Freeman took possession of the Olympic flame and set off amid thousands of cheering fans at the landmark Opera House on Sydney Harbour.