Tired of trying to get a bit of peace and quiet in one of the world’s most densely populated countries, a Bangladeshi man with a head for heights has hit on the perfect solution. Each day carpenter and aspiring writer Salim Hossen Gaus, aged 25, winches himself 30m in a precarious home-made pulley to a small wooden platform he has built at the top of a palm tree.
Former World Cup winner Matthew Burke could be called on as Australia’s potential insurance policy for this year’s tournament as cover for the sidelined Chris Latham, reports said on Monday. The Australian Rugby Union has confirmed that 34-year-old Burke, who last played for the Wallabies in 2004 before heading to England to play club rugby, had been sounded out about the possibility.
President Robert Mugabe’s government will soon withdraw financial support for black-owned commercial farms resettled under Zimbabwe’s controversial land reform policy. The move follows charges by central bank governor Gideon Gono that the reforms had caused chronic food shortages in the one-time food exporter.
The Iraqi prime minister has called for an investigation into an operation by Iraqi and British forces in Basra which found evidence of torture when they raided an Iraqi intelligence agency detention centre on Sunday. Officials at the detention centre told Reuters that 37 prisoners were freed in the raid.
Conservationists may take legal action if environmental laws are broken in the building of 2010 Soccer World Cup stadiums, the South African Broadcasting Corporation reported on Monday. Should the groups go forward with their legal action, the construction of the stadiums could face further delays.
In the ruined ballroom of the Bokor Palace Hotel it is easy to imagine, amid the shattered floor tiles and mouldy walls, the clink of champagne flutes and lively chatter of a night out in this tiny colonial hill station. A symbol of both the excesses of Cambodia’s golden age and the apocalypse that followed, the long abandoned hotel and casino is now only haunted by curious tourists.
When Albert ”Chinky” Facchiano was born in 1910, Al Capone was just another young thug in short trousers. Almost a century later, Scarface and the other legendary gangsters of his ilk are long gone — dead of old age, whacked in mob hits or simply vanished into witness protection programmes.
Trade between Zimbabwe and China is expected to surge to half a billion US dollars by next year, Beijing’s ambassador to Harare was reported as saying on Monday. The Asian giant has already emerged as the largest single importer of Zimbabwe’s key export crop, tobacco.
The number of Gauteng schoolgirls who fell pregnant in 2006 was double that of the previous year, the Star newspaper reported on Monday. The newspaper said 2Â 336 schoolgirls were pregnant last year — up from 2004 when 1Â 373, and 2005 when 1Â 169 schoolgirls were reported pregnant.
International concerns about China’s growing military power and a spiralling global arms race intensified on Sunday when Beijing announced its biggest defence budget increase for more than 10 years. Weeks after China stunned the world by test-firing its first anti-satellite missile, the government said it will increase spending by 17,8% this year.