”The dark nations of Africa, strikingly precocious as young children, seemed to come to a standstill in their mental growth at different ages. The Kikuyu, Kawirondo and Wakamba, the people who worked for me on the farm, in early childhood were far ahead of the white children of the same age, but they stopped quite suddenly at a stage corresponding to a European child of nine.”
”If Shell have the guts to come to the Ijaws’ land, we won’t just kidnap their workers, now they will disappear,” threatened Joseph Evah, coordinator of the Ijaw Monitoring Group, in the wake of a court judgement against oil giant Shell. The judgement ordered the company to pay ,5-billion to the Ijaw community in the Niger region of Nigeria for environmental damage in the region.
Some men hold paper tissues under their noses; others wrap their kuffiya ends around their mouths. It is a hot and humid day at the city’s main morgue where 20 men stand in a yard, their faces pressed with silent urgency against the bars of a window, next to a white plastic sign that baldly announces the location of ”The Refrigerator”.
I’ve always believed the military is no place for pussies (feminist gallery: exeunt omnes). And when countries steeped in centuries-old traditions and ideas regarding the place of ”their women” suddenly find themselves in the terrain of a 21st-century war zone, it doesn’t help when the new guy on the block starts rubbing ”his women” in your face.
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Andy Roddick, the fifth seed, was knocked out of the French Open on Tuesday when he retired from his first-round match with Spain’s Alberto Martin. The American was trailing 6-4, 7-5, 1-0 when he called it quits. Roddick was always destined to struggle having picked up an ankle injury at the World Team Cup in Dusseldorf last week.
The removal of people from the Thamboville informal settlement near Benoni on Johannesburg’s East Rand turned violent when residents clashed with police on Tuesday. Ekurhuleni metro police spokesperson Superintendent Vusi Mabanga said the relocation of residents to Albert Luthuli Park informal settlement, also in Benoni, was supposed to start at 6am.
A Jordanian court on Tuesday sentenced to prison two newspaper editors for ”attacking religious sentiment” by reprinting cartoons deemed offensive to Prophet Muhammad, their lawyer said. Jihad Momani, former editor of the weekly Shihane tabloid, and Hisham al-Khalidi, editor-in-chief of the tabloid Al-Mehwar, ”were each sentenced to two months in prison”, attorney Mohammed Kteishat told Agence France-Presse.
Outgoing Treasury Secretary John Snow was seen as a loyal but uninspired cheerleader for a roaring United States economy that has been one of the few bright spots for US President George Bush in his second term. Snow’s impending departure has been one of Washington’s worst-kept secrets.
Thousands of desperate Indonesian quake survivors were still waiting for aid on Tuesday as they prepared for a fourth night under makeshift tents, despite pledges that help would come quickly. The death toll from Saturday’s powerful earthquake had risen to nearly 5Â 700.