The summit between presidents George Bush and Vladimir Putin ended on Monday without a breakthrough on the issues that have brought relations between the two to the lowest point since the Cold War. The Bush administration hoped the informal setting would be conducive to diplomacy.
After years of relative calm, the yakuza have recently captured the public imagination in Japan. Shoko Tendo’s story, <i>Yakuza Moon: Memoirs of a Gangster’s Daughter</i>, has become a surprise bestseller in Japan in 2004, shining a light into a dark and little-understood corner of modern Japan.
"We want to shed the light on the mystery of this thing called governance. What is governance? What is it about?" Mo Ibrahim, the chairperson of Celtel International and the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, which supports good governance in Africa, speaks to Stephanie Wolters.
Fears are growing for the welfare of detained Burmese Aids activist Phyu Phyu Thin (35), who has been on a hunger strike since June 19. Thin and 11 other activists were arrested on May 21 while attending a prayer service for opposition National League for Democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been under house arrest for 12 years.
COUNTERPOINT: Whether ultimately we call it a United States of Africa, an African Union, United Africa or what have you, the ideal of African unity is an abiding yearning. It has been with us, in different guises, since the closing years of the 19th century, not long after the start of the Scramble for Africa.
Hours after he was sure he had won, Rafael Nadal still had some work to do to reach the fourth round at Wimbledon. A point away from victory in the third set on Monday, Nadal hit a forehand he thought ended his match against Robin Soderling. Nadal raised both arms in celebration, then realised his shot had been called out.
Italian women are flocking to the country’s first all-female beach: a short stretch of sand designed to let bathers relax away from prying eyes and football talk. Bathers arriving at beach number 134 on the 80km stretch of beach clubs linking Rimini to Riccione are greeted by a large sign featuring a crossed-out image of a man.
More than six decades after the Holocaust, the museum at the death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau has turned to ultra-modern technology to ensure the legacy of Nazis’ victims is never lost. The challenge was how to preserve masses of suitcases, shoes, eye-glasses, human hair and other poignant reminders of the lives of those exterminated under Hitler’s ”final solution”.
POINT: In the grasping imagination of 19th-century European explorers, Mali’s Timbuktu was a fabled city of gold. This week’s African Union summit in Ghana evokes images of a similarly elusive quest for an African El Dorado. But putting old wine in new bottles will not integrate Africa, writes Adekeye Adebajo.
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