Eve Ensler has just returned from hell. That is how the author of The Vagina Monologues describes her trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where tens of thousands of women have been sexually attacked and mutilated in the African nation’s civil war.
Senegal’s movie business, home of some of the continent’s first black filmmakers, is in the throes of crisis with cinema theatres downing shutters as cheap and mostly pirated DVDs flood the markets. Many cinema halls have been turned into warehouses for anything from spare car parts to cheap Chinese trinkets hawked on the streets.
A Johannesburg man rescued his daughter from the jaws of a hyena after it attacked the girl in Botswana, Beeld reported on Thursday. The animal grabbed eight-year-old Christin Chalwin-Milton on the left side of the head while she was asleep in a chair next to a campfire in the Okavango Delta.
Shimon Peres, Israel’s President, said on Wednesday in an interview at his Jerusalem office he sees a ”real opportunity” to make peace with the Palestinians and highlighted progress on both political and economic agreements ahead of further talks to be held in the United States this autumn.
More than two million tickets have been sold for the Rugby World Cup, which kicks off on September 7, the organising committee of rugby’s showpiece four-yearly event said on Wednesday. "We have sold 2,05-million tickets and it’s not finished since we’re still shifting about 1Â 500 a day," said committee head Bernard Lapasset.
United States President George Bush sought to buy more time for his Iraq ”surge” strategy on Wednesday by making a risky comparison for the first time with the bloodshed and chaos that followed the US pull-out from Vietnam. He made it clear he will resist congressional pressure next month for an early withdrawal.
The European special envoy for Kosovo has dismissed suggestions that the European Union favours partitioning the province between its ethnic Albanian majority and a northern Serb enclave, saying the idea had not been discussed and was not a realistic option.
A leading member of Germany’s Jewish community has accused the government of failing to control right-wing extremism following an attack on a group of Indian men in an eastern town. His remarks followed a brutal attack on eight Indians in the town of Mügeln, near Leipzig, at the weekend.
Historic churches and colonial-era haciendas along Peru’s southern coast suffered serious damage in last week’s earthquake, which also halted boat trips to an offshore wildlife reserve. In a statement, Peru’s Foreign Trade and Tourism Ministry lamented ”significant damage” to old churches and other important tourist sites.
The United States Justice Department is giving Britain’s largest airline a break, even as it faces one the largest antitrust fines in years. Representatives of British Airways are scheduled to plead guilty on Thursday to two counts of conspiracy and face a likely fine of -million for colluding with Virgin Atlantic over fuel surcharges.