I am writing from London on the day that Muslim leaders meet Prime Minister Tony Blair in Downing Street to discuss a response to the London blasts. I wish them well — I still await a satisfactory response to a letter I sent last year enquiring about the number of Iraqi civilians killed by coalition forces since the invasion of Iraq in April 2003.
Once again the war of words waged by Jake White and Eddie Jones has been a familiar theme in the build-up to Saturday’s Mandela Challenge Plate Test between South Africa and Australia at Ellis Park. Both men have used the media to good effect in an attempt to bait their opposite number.
Business at the numerous money transfer agencies in Cameroon’s capital, Yaoundé, is typically a brisk affair. Of the many people who frequent the agencies, one group is of particular interest, however: the husbands of women who have gone abroad to earn money from prostitution.
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James Doohan, the burly chief engineer of the starship Enterprise in the original Star Trek TV series and motion pictures who was famously associated with the command ”Beam me up, Scotty”, died early on Wednesday. He was 85. The cause of death was pneumonia and Alzheimer’s disease, a friend said.
United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Wednesday wrapped up a three-day forum in Dakar, Senegal, on boosting trade ties between Africa and the world’s largest economy, which for many Africans fell short of concrete commitments to assist their home-grown enterprise.
Pakistan’s Interior Minister, Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao, on Wednesday confirmed 200 Islamic activists have been rounded up in a renewed crackdown on religious extremists, but denied any links with the London bombings. Pakistani security agencies on Tuesday raided various mosques and Islamic schools across the country.
Confronting the issue of corporal punishment is often difficult because it is so personal, a conference on violence against children heard in South Africa on Wednesday. Peter Newell, of the Global Initiative to End All Corporal Punishment of Children, was speaking ahead of a United Nations study on violence against children.
British lawmakers faced criticism from their own number on Tuesday after only 30 — less than 5% of the total — turned up for an anti-terrorism drill in Parliament. The exercise took place on Tuesday morning, when the chamber and galleries of the House of Commons were cleared after a planned "interruption" from a gallery.
The deputy president of the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) has apologised after raising his views on who should lead the ANC in 2007. Reuben Mohlaloga apologised for raising his views outside the working structures of the ANCYL, league president Fikile Mbalula told reporters in Johannesburg on Wednesday.