AT least 22 people were killed and 12 wounded when explosives blew up on the lorry on which they were travelling in Hiran in central Somalia, local authorities said. “The explosion occurred inside the vehicle, which was transporting passengers as well as explosives. There was no attack from outside,” Hiran regional governor Hassan Abdulle Qalad […]
THE Mail & Guardian newspaper has reported a steady climb in it’s circulation figures to reach a record high in its 16-year history. From a circulation base that dropped to a monthly low of about 32_000 in 1999, the M&G has now grown more than 30% (unaudited) as compared to its lowest circulation figures of […]
ZAMBIA’S Anti-Corruption Commission said on Tuesday it had launched a probe into allegations two cabinet ministers used state funds to finance elections within the ruling party. ”We are investigating the diversion of the cash from the national assembly, allegedly to finance the recently-held MMD party elections,” the commission’s director of operations Bradford Malumbe said. At […]
KHADIJA MAGARDIE, Johannesburg | Friday LAWYERS for Cape Town candidate attorney Gareth Prince are proposing that Rastafari carry a pass, authorising them to smoke dope. The Constitutional Court this week resumed argument on whether Prince should be exempted from legislation outlawing the possession and use of the drug. He was refused admission by the Cape […]
THE breakaway state of Somaliland in northwest Somalia will hold a referendum on May 31 to ask three million voters whether they want independence from Mogadishu, officials said Tuesday. “There is no way we will postpone it,” said Abdulkadir Hagi Ismail Jirdeh, deputy speaker of Somaliland’s parliament. Somaliland, which seceded from the rest of Somalia […]
TWELVE UN Security Council envoys announced plans in South Africa on Thursday for a timetable to end the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), then headed for Kinshasa as President Joseph Kabila lifted a ban on political activity. Kabila’s move “sets the stage for positive development in the days to come,” the team’s […]
NIGERIAN President Olusegun Obasanjo announced on Tuesday that the African Union, an economic community that will succeed the Organisation for African Unity (OAU), will be established later this month. Nigeria ratified the African Union’s constitutive act on April 26, bringing the number of OAU member states supporting the union up to the necessary two thirds. […]
What a bizarre, sulphuric, directionless satire from Spike Lee <b>Bamboozled</b> is. The title is from a speech by Malcolm X ("You’ve been led astray, led amok. You’ve been bamboozled") and Lee quotes it by unblushingly showing a clip of his own movie with Denzel Washington addressing a crowd.
Mike Rapaport plays a white television executive obsessed with black culture in Spike Lee’s <i>Bamboozled</i>, but in real life he’s no Vanilla Ice, writes Bob Strauss.
Crime is one of the major streams of film narrative. Some movies – such as <i>Pulp Fiction</i> or this week’s release <b>The Mexican</b> – even exist in a criminal world apparently altogether free of police personnel. <i>The Mexican</i> must have put tears of joy into the eyes of its Hollywood producers.