The United States is planning military action against Iran because President George Bush is intent on regime change in Tehran — and not just as a contingency if diplomatic efforts fail to halt its suspected nuclear weapons programme, it was reported on Sunday. In the New Yorker magazine, Seymour Hersh, America’s best known investigative journalist, concluded that the Bush administration is even considering the use of a tactical nuclear weapon.
Eight South African women have been locked up in a Mauritius prison for the past eight weeks, News24 reported on Monday. It quoted Marius Mey, fiancé of 27-year-old Michelle Roux, one of the women, as saying: ”They have been held in the dungeons for the past eight weeks.
A stampede after an Islamic ceremony killed at least 29 women and children and left more than 100 injured in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi on Sunday. About 10 ,000 women had gathered in the Faizan-e-Madina mosque to hear sermons about the prophet Muhammad, whose birthday is celebrated on Tuesday.
An internal United States government report portrays a grim picture of Iraq’s stability, rating six of the country’s 18 provinces as in a ”serious” situation and one ”critical”, it emerged on Sunday. The US ambassador in Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad confirmed the report, which was leaked to the New York Times, but said it marked an improvement on last year.
Television director Ken Kirsten was shot and killed in his driveway in Northcliff Johannesburg, South African Broadcasting Corporation news reported on Monday. According to his neighbour, Kirsten returned home after walking his dog when he was shot at point-blank range. The motive for the killing was not known.
Angola’s rebel province of Cabinda is on a difficult search for a settlement to end decades of separatist fighting in this patch of land that is the lifeline of the country’s oil boom. A peace overture from the Angolan government is being received with skepticism — although not rejected — in the poor northern province where offshore oil generates billions of dollars to Luanda’s coffers.
In the east of Gauteng, the Phumlani Secondary School is nestled in the centre of the densely populated Katlehong township with its untarred streets and a dusty, open sports ground. This week, the school scooped top honours in the national Department of Education awards for home language improvement.
My friend Zakes Mda asked me to be more specific about the comments I had made some weeks ago about Gavin Hood’s film adaptation of the Athol Fugard novel <i>Tsotsi</i>. So here we go. Adapting a film from a novel demands some severe choices. Inevitably much of the essence of the novel’s complexities will be lost in the interest, supposedly, of meeting the tighter demands of a film.
The National Treasury has finally put its cards on the table and stated its position on the reforms it would like to see in the life industry and, in the process, took the matter of agent commissions far further than any previous discussions with the industry. The government will first undertake a full investigation into the insurance sector to assess the degree of competition.
With a huge amount of detergent, a young man washes a bus on the shores of Lake Victoria while a woman nearby cleans dishes seemingly oblivious to the chemical contamination. It’s an ordinary day here in Western Kenya where Africa’s largest lake is under siege, its life-sustaining waters and fish increasingly polluted by sewage, industrial waste and chemicals.