Alison Whelan Body Language Celibacy was a subject I would giggle and snigger at. It was for people who were too ugly or too weird to get sex anyway. So it is with more than a little humility that I admit to having committed myself to a six- month celibacy contract, with an option to […]
Paul Trueman Online gaming is the fastest-growing industry on the Internet, where players spend hours online sharing information … and killing each other. Some friends and I blew up the Death Star last night, freeing the galaxy from the emperor’s evil tyranny. Not bad for a night’s work. I used to be someone who got […]
Sathima Bea Benjamin. The name rings with enough familiar mystique to enthrall the musically conscientious and the politically conscious. It’s a name rekindling memories of her pristine interpretations of the songs of Duke Ellington, her musical mentor. It rings with the reminder of her somewhat funky 1988 tribute to Winnie Madikizela-Mandela on her most well-known […]
Ken Daniels Horse-racing This year’s Rothmans July seemed to have fallen flat when the horse racing fraternity’s VIP decided not to come to the party. But the event may still be saved by a surprise guest who slipped in the back door at the last minute. Horse wonder Horse Chestnut was just threatening to capture […]
David Sharrock in Jerusalem Nine hundred years after the first crusaders reached Jerusalem on a mission to free the Holy City from Islamic control, massacring thousands of Jews and Muslims, a second wave of Western Christians arrived this week with a very different purpose – to apologise for the actions of their bloodthirsty forebears. The […]
Shaun Harris Taking Stock There is still an intimidating air about private banks. They service an exclusive ring of wealthy, often powerful clients who fall within the scope of that dreadful term, “high net-worth individuals”. So are private banks really only for the filthy rich? Well yes, but not as exclusively as in the past. […]
1975: Angola wins independence from Portugal amid civil war and intervention from the apartheid regime in South Africa. The conflict evolves into a war between the new Marxist MPLA government and its main rival, the then Maoist Unita led by Jonas Savimbi. Cold war years: Washington funds Unita while apartheid South Africa fights many of […]
William Fotheringham Cycling When it starts on Saturday in the Vende, this will be the Tour de France of crossed fingers, murmured prayers and nervous glances over Lycra-clad shoulders. For there was no precedent for last year’s disastrous, scandal-stricken Tour. This year’s race has been billed as “the Tour of reconstruction”, but events took on […]
Ivor Powell While talks in Lusaka aimed at securing a ceasefire in the Democratic Republic of Congo continue to stutter, the war is intensifying in the diamond-rich area around Mbuji Mayi. Congolese forces are reportedly under heavy attack in the town of Kabinda, 100km to the east of the diamond capital, Mbuji Mayi. They are […]
Cameron Duodu Letter from the North I wonder whether Congolese politicians realise the impatience and irritation with which the rest of us in Africa look on as they squabble over the terms of the peace agreement that could give their country a chance to recover from the ravages of Mobutu Sese Seko’s kleptocratic rule? Don’t […]