”Now, you have black faces riding in limousines along with white faces. But, the social and economic system has not changed, maybe even gotten worse.” Linguist Noam Chomsky has become a leading dissident voice in the United States. He talks exclusively to the M&G.

While party leaders in KwaZulu-Natal step up the rhetoric and war-talk ahead of the elections, communities on the ground are increasingly refusing to be used as cannon-fodder in political ”turf” wars. Eight people have been killed in clashes between the Inkatha Freedom Party and the African National Congress in KwaZulu-Natal in the past month.

It was 10 on the dot on Monday morning when the usher called the International Court of Justice to order to hear the case against Israel’s West Bank ”security fence”. Inside the United Nations building, officially called the Peace Palace, everything went smoothly.

A suicide car bomb attack at a police station in Kirkuk on Monday killed at least 10 people and wounded 45 others. The attack raised fears for the fragile peace which has held in the oil-rich, northern Iraqi city since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

The public will get a chance to decide if a photograph that scientists claim to be a rare image of Vincent van Gogh is really the artist or a simple case of mistaken identity. Van Gogh painted more than 40 self-portraits but there are only two photographs in existence that are widely believed to be the artist — at the ages of 13 and 19.

It could be billed as a case of David and Goliath, or at least the minnow against the whale. A French children’s book author told a Paris court on Monday that the main fish character in the Disney film Finding Nemo, which has so far grossed -million, was a direct copy of his own creation, a cheerful orange and white clown fish named Pierrot.