Even by Arab standards, the cult of Saddam Hussein was obsessive. Until yesterday, it was difficult to turn a corner in Baghdad without coming upon a statue or poster of him.
The bodies of 75 Aboriginal men and women were returned to Australia yesterday after spending decades in the collection of the Royal College of Surgeons in London.
Mugabe’s government has committed severe human rights abuses against the opposition party, has repressed the press and the judiciary and is largely responsible for the famine in Zimbabwe, according to a Commonwealth report.
The National cricket squad arrived in Dhaka yesterday morning at the start of their first full tour of Bangladesh.
The problem with The Vagina Monologues is that a show about the worship of a sexual organ is easily lost on those of us who want to understand the deeper meaning behind men’s, and indeed women’s, attitudes to sexual violence.
In Damascus, where anger over the invasion of Iraq alternates with pride in the resistance, there is one sure way to lighten the mood. Suggest the war was launched because of Saddam Hussein’s suspected weapons of mass destruction. Everyone here believes it is a war for oil.
He is an unlikely public figure, a quiet man whose hobbies include preparing Swedish fish dishes — but for a few months, the world hung on his every word. So could Hans Blix have done anything to stop the war?
After the new post-apartheid Constitution was adopted in 1997, restrictions were swept aside and mines reported queues of up to 500 women vying for the chance to work underground. Now women are snubbing domestic employment to prove their mettle in the male-dominated mining industry.
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Now that the dust around the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report has settled, the reputation of former president FW de Klerk’s legacy as a peacemaker and a co-liberator is being reassessed. He might have been more of a political pragmatist than a peacemaker.