A French motorist has been given a three-month suspended prison sentence for doing his level best to run over a pedestrian he mistakenly identified as Osama bin Laden. The pedestrian only narrowly avoided being mown down when the car finally ran into a wall.
The United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, said on Wednesday that the outgoing Spanish prime minister, José MarÃa Aznar, whose party was defeated in Sunday’s general election, had paid for backing the Iraq war and for blaming last week’s attacks on the armed Basque separatist group Eta.
From the wet tropics to the dry centre, to wheat fields to urban sprawl, a new train is chugging its way up and down Australia each week. After a century of promises and planning the Ghan extension finally started rolling last month with a maiden voyage from Adelaide in South Australia to tropical Darwin in the Northern Territory.
"Flying into Malawi is like stepping back in time. Never mind the SAL/SAA logo imprinted on the kitchen cupboards of the Air Malawi plane; the size of the airport seen from the air made me feel like a colonial traveller sans pith helmet." Nicola Mawson found that despite the poverty, Malawi is a vibrant country.
Campaign resources, especially financial resources, always stir heated debates in all democracies and it is an issue increasingly coming to the fore in South Africa.
This is a serious issue because it will be a sad day indeed if the amount of resources will be the determinant of which party is going to win an election.
"I am still the Hitler of the time. This Hitler has only one objective. Justice for his people. Sovereignty for his people. If that is Hitler, then let me be a Hitler tenfold."
On March 26 last year, the Zimbabwean despot, Robert Mugabe, said these words at a political rally. There was immediate and outraged local response but, as I recall, articulated only in the media and by opposition voices.
Opposition parties, desperate for a popular cause on which to challenge the African National Congress and looking anxiously over their right shoulders at each other, have exhumed the death penalty as an issue in this election. It is worth reiterating some of the arguments used by the Constitutional Court in striking down the death penalty nearly 10 years ago.
The delicate topic of sharing the Nile’s water is coming under discussion this week in Kenya, at a meeting to find ways of alleviating poverty in countries that lie within the Nile basin. The five-day meeting, which began on Monday in Nairobi, aims to promote cooperation between Nile states so that the river could be used sustainably.
Qummergal grimaced as she bared her face to a camera for the first time. But when she saw her portrait, she giggled with delight. ”I can’t believe it’s me,” she said. ”Look at me. It’s wonderful!” Qummergal was registering to vote in Afghanistan’s first elections since the advent of war 25 years ago.
It was bound to happen and, thankfully, it has. The sanctity of former president Nelson Mandela and his legacy has been shattered and perhaps now we have the opportunity to critically evaluate this legacy. For too long we have accepted as gospel that Madiba’s legacy was fruitful reconciliation, writes Itumeleng Mahabane.