Life expectancy for women in Zimbabwe has plummeted to just 34 years, by far the lowest in the world according to data released on Friday by the World Health Organisation. Women in the Southern African nation and in nearby Swaziland are the only ones in the world who are not expected to live into their forties.
The French President Jacques Chirac is about to unveil what he hopes will be his greatest legacy to the nation — a â,¬260m riverside monument to himself as the ”great defender” of African and Asian indigenous culture. In the shadow of the Eiffel Tower on Paris’s left bank, workmen are putting the finishing touches to Chirac’s decade-long pet project, the Musée du Quai Branly.
United States President George Bush authorised a senior aide to the Vice-President, Dick Cheney, to leak classified intelligence on Iraq to the New York Times reporter Judith Miller, according to court documents made public on Thursday. Lewis ”Scooter” Libby, Cheney’s former chief of staff, told a grand jury that the authorisation from Bush was ”unique in his experience”.
A former Senate aide who wrote a sexually explicit blog about her relations with officials on Capitol Hill is facing a lawsuit for invasion of privacy. Jessica Cutler, whose short-lived blog astonished Washington in 2004, is being sued by Robert Steinbuch, a former legal counsel to the Ohio Republican senator Mike DeWine.
The holy city of Najaf was rocked by a car bomb on Thursday that killed at least 10 people and wounded 40, threatening to increase tensions between Iraq’s Shia and Sunni Arabs. The explosion took place on a crowded street near the shrine of the imam Ali — one of Shia Islam’s most revered sites.
British defence and aerospace giant BAE Systems said on Friday it was holding negotiations on the sale of its 20% stake in aircraft maker Airbus to Franco-German counterpart EADS. "Discussions are at an early stage and a further announcement will be made if and when appropriate," said BAE.
The smugglers’ trail crosses salt-encrusted plains, scrabbly farmland and hundreds of blossoming poppy fields. Suddenly a fortress-like structure looms. The high-walled mansion belongs to Haji Adam, an opium smuggler, locals say. Tales of his wealth are legion.
The government, sponsors and the World Cup local organising committee (LOC) are willing to pay the salary of a top foreign coach to ensure South Africa does well when it hosts the 2010 showpiece. A senior official at the South African Football Association (Safa), who did not want to be named, said the LOC and the government wanted to have a big say in the rebuilding of Bafana Bafana.
After being reviled for more than 2 000 years as the embodiment of treachery, Judas Iscariot’s side of the story was finally published on Thursday. Thanks to a newly discovered gospel in Judas’s name, we now know what his excuse was: Jesus made me do it.
Beijing plans to make full use of its authoritarian powers during the Olympics in 2008 by banning more than two million cars to ensure that one of the world’s most polluted cities will have clear skies for at least the two weeks of the games. Billions of dollars are being spent on Olympic venues, new roads and the world’s biggest airport terminal.