The Israeli military has accused a faction of Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement of using an 11-year-old boy as an unwitting human bomb after the child was discovered carrying explosive through an army checkpoint in Nablus. The army says Abdullah Quran’s life was saved only because a mobile phone rigged as a detonator failed to set off the explosive when he was stopped on Monday.
Aids experts warned on Tuesday that Africa should stop using a drug which has been hailed as one of the continent’s best tools in fighting the HIV pandemic. They said the drug, nevirapine, which reduces the number of mothers transmitting the HIV virus to new-born babies, risks doing more harm than good.
One of the more unsavoury aspects of the Convergence Bill is its specific reference to "online publishing" and "information services" and its apparent attempt to regulate website publishing in South Africa. But why the licence fee on websites if print isn’t regulated? Matthew Buckland looks at the anomalies in the proposed Convergence Bill.
This month <i>The Media</i> goes out on a thin limb to suggest the ten most influential media bosses on the African continent. The list is compiled by Sean O’Toole and Kevin Bloom, in consultation with Professor Tawana Kupe, and is based on criteria including economic muscle, political authority and cultural clout.
Howard Stern and vomit fetishes, the Mayan apocalypse, comics to help kids deal with bereavement, gifts for the newly single and Bush Blogs, Ian Fraser trawls the Net to bring you the weird and the wonderful on the world wide web.
Sibongile* was seven years old when her aunt’s husband first sexually abused her. She tried to escape from the repeated abuse and sought help from a neighbour, who was a pastor. To her horror he, in turn, raped her. Another neighbour, however, helped her to go to the police. Sibongile’s case is one of a minority that have reached the courts in Swaziland.
"I take strong exception to being lumped together with the so-called ‘Bantustan stooges’ and in fact these averments by your newspaper are defamatory per se." Minister of Home Affairs and president of the Inkatha Freedom Party Mangosuthu Buthelezi responds to the <i>M&G</i>.
Brian A Smith didn’t know the two women who were shoplifting. They were caught on security cameras stealing sheets at the Los Cerritos mall in Los Angeles and received a two-year sentence. But Smith was seen standing near the shoplifters as they committed their crime. Despite having no stolen goods, he was convicted of aiding and abetting them.
Before long you will be able to tune in to your favourite breakfast programmes not just while getting ready for work — but after you have left. Cellphones that can receive digital television and radio broadcasts are starting to appear. Nokia, the Finnish cell-phone maker, is offering what it calls ”visual radio” with a radio station in that country.
There is something quaintly exotic about a woman playing a man’s game. Especially if the game entails the ritual of hunting and hooking up with the opposite sex because they are wont to employ that traditional weapon hookers and trollops called flirting.