Deep in the Peligna valley, where north Italy meets south, villagers celebrate one of Europe’s oldest spring festivals — a bizarre, 3 000-year-old tradition that mixes pagan rights, ancient rituals, the Catholic Church and snakes. Nadia Attura makes a pilgrimage to one of Italy’s most unusual holy festivals
In preparation for the Olympics the Greek capital of Athens has been receiving a bit of a facelift. Here are the highlights that make for a perfect day of sightseeing: First up, pick up a street <i>koulouria</i> (sesame-seeded bread rings sold at stalls), or a savoury filo pie, as the locals do …
Tell it like it is. That’s the request from the Tourism Grading Council of South Africa, which has launched a new tool in an attempt to encourage consumers to spill the beans, for better or worse, on their experiences at graded accommodation establishments across the country.
A bevy of girls emerges from a group of farmhouses, three of them giggling after they spot rare visitors to this part of the world: two Chinese nationals. The men are part of a group of journalists that has been invited to tour various farms to inspect South Africa’s land reform programme. The girls belong to nine black families that bought the property from a white commercial farmer, Toets Cahl, in February.
The recent videotaped beheading of a United States "contractor" in Iraq appears to have been nothing more than an act of psy-ops digital snuff porn. Despite appearances of it being just a simple act of video barbarism by "terrorists", there are many questions about this incident that the mass media aren’t asking. Ian Fraser asks the questions.
Fierce civil strife, it was. The battle between South African newspaper editors and the feminist organisation Gender Links, waged in the run up to International Women’s Day on March 8th, was instigated by the "back page". There’s no easy solution to the fight that recently erupted between editors and feminists over the "back page". Tawana Kupe explains the problem.
Patricia De Lille has long been an outspoken critic of mediocrity, corruption and incompetence in South African government and society. Andy Davis speaks to the firebrand politician and gets her to train her sights on South African media.
The allocation of time-slots for political party election broadcasts may not be fair on the smaller parties. Greg Hamburger thinks the regulator should keep a careful watch on the 2004 process.
So it’s not quite a Fleet Street paper, and probably never will be, but that’s not getting in the way of the local freesheet’s success. What is it about the community newspaper sector that lets some publishers rake in the dough every week? Megan Chronis reports.
The world, if the biologists’ projections turn out to be correct, will soon begin to revert to the Bible’s fourth day of creation. There will be grass and "herb-yielding seed" and "the fruit tree yielding fruit". But "the moving creature that hath life", the "fowl that may fly above the Earth", or the "great whales, and every living creature that moveth" may one day be almost unknown to us. George Monbiot reports.