"Welcome to our extreme conditions!" booms the mayor of Kemi. "We Finns have been making holes in the snow for hundreds of years!" Subtlety, understatement … such things are the preserve of balmier climes. Up here on the Arctic Circle in February, the temperature lurks around -20°C and you say it like it is, whether it’s about the weather or the holes or why you came here in the first place.
Development plans currently being put into action at Cape Town International airport will enable it to meet projected passenger demand until 2050, the Airports Company of South Africa (ACSA) has said. Designed to accommodate 200 000 passengers a month, the domestic terminals are currently handling an average of 280 000 passengers.
The South African consumer’s sterling role in buffing up the country’s economic performance appears to be nearing its end, with appetite for credit showing a decline and implying a need for new sources of economic growth. This is according to the Reserve Bank’s Quarterly Bulletin released this week.
The state-owned Zimbabwe Defence Industries (ZDI) has come under the spotlight for a controversial sale of weapons of war to the 70 suspected mercenaries currently being held in Harare. During the initial remand hearing for the suspects on Tuesday ZDI was officially confirmed as the supplier of a large consignment of arms to the group.
It’s been a confusing few months for world-weary observers of African elections, as they’ve sat and watched South Africa and waited for the smoke to rise. Where’s all the razor wire? This isn’t an election campaign, it’s a queue. And no one is cutting in. Frankly, this year’s election campaign has been decidedly dull.
During the second Test last week, a peculiar exchange took place between South African commentator Neil Manthorp and one of his unbearably prissy and pedantic New Zealand counterparts. Labouring towards some sort of expression of the lack of bite in South Africa’s bowling attack, the Kiwi suggested that there was a lack of ”nip” about it.
Mathew Sinclair only had an hour to prepare for his test comeback but New Zealand team management could almost spend that long thanking him for bailing them out of trouble against South Africa on Friday.
To the outside world, Israel’s assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin looks either indefensible or inexplicable or both. Some have moral objections to the killing of a quadriplegic cleric, wheeled out from morning prayers; others have legal worries about extra-judicial killings. The key to the assassination is Sharon’s plan to pull out of Gaza. But he has again strengthened extremism.
In the poor Boston neighbourhood where 18-year-old Stephanie Alves grew up, words such as bitch and ho are part of everyday male conversation. This slang is not used to pass judgement on a woman engaged in a particular activity but to describe any female. Rap has been criticised for its negative portrayal of women right from the start.
Pakistani troops battling suspected al-Qaeda fighters in Pakistan’s lawless north this week discovered a 1,6km-long tunnel running through the battlefield, through which senior al-Qaeda members may have escaped, officials said. Several tunnels were discovered leading from a huddle of fiercely defended mud fortresses near Afghanistan’s border.