Last Saturday afternoon at the Palais des Sports in Paris, a dapper aristocrat called Philippe de Villiers assembled about 5 000 people who presumably had other things to do. His posters, plastered everywhere, were eloquent: ”We all,”’ they said, ”have a good reason to vote no.”
A £2,2-billion pipeline that will deliver a million barrels of crude oil a day to the Mediterranean Sea, and is set to become a vital gateway for central Asian energy resources to the West, opened on Wednesday. The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline will run for 1 760km from the Azerbaijani capital through Georgia to the Turkish port, and through two of the most politically turbulent countries in the region.
It could be at least five years before Iraqi forces are strong enough to impose law and order on the country, the International Institute of Strategic Studies has warned. The think tank’s report said that Iraq had become a valuable recruiting ground for al-Qaeda, and Iraqi forces were nowhere near close to matching the insurgency.
Jose Mourinho believes John Terry is worth a world record transfer fee of at least £50-million, although he stressed that the Chelsea captain was not for sale at any price. Mourinho described Terry as the world’s best central defender and feels his value exceeds the record £47,2-million that Real Madrid paid for Zinédine Zidane in 2001.
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) warned Europe’s leaders this week that failure to embark on reform of the continent’s underperforming economy would put the credibility of monetary union at risk. The Paris-based OECD said Europe had run out of excuses to explain away its poor recent record.
Omnia was nine years old the day she was forced on to a cold metal table by her mother and grandmother and circumcised by a stranger. Now 22, she has never forgotten the incident. ”Before I knew what was happening she was cutting me, and I started screaming … The stranger told me, ‘If you scream you will bleed and I will have to tie you. So don’t scream.”’
How disappointing that the Mail & Guardian fails to call for change from business as usual in the ”Energy crunch” editorial of May 13. The editors declared ”we believe the revolutionary nuclear technology used in the pebble bed modular reactor [PBMR] offers a feasible option …” Has the M&G seen new information, asks Earthlife Africa’s Richard Worthington.
It is possible that the market is transferring as much or more land between whites and blacks than state land reform, according to research released this week by the Centre for Development and Enterprise. It poses a challenge to the notion that only the state can lead land reform. It suggests the current approach to land reform is too narrow and does not take into account important new realities.
As the continent celebrated Africa Day on Wednesday, the non- governmental group Amnesty International released Report 2005: The State of the World’s Human Rights. It contrasts international reaction to the tsunami disaster with responses to other global crises that left ”comparable numbers of victims in their wake” with particular reference to Darfur in Sudan.
If you’re planning to get rid of troublesome waste like paint thinners or oil by pouring it down the drain or dumping it in the veld, watch out — you may end up with some kick-arse dirt busters on your case. This is the message of a court case in which an East London pub owner was fined R100 000 for burying drums of hazardous waste on his property.