No image available
/ 29 December 2007
Kenya’s opposition claimed victory on Saturday in a presidential vote after official figures gave their candidate a four-percentage point lead over President Mwai Kibaki on three-quarters of the count. Delays announcing the results ignited deep ethnic tensions as youths wielding machetes fought, looted and burned homes in opposition strongholds.
No image available
/ 25 December 2007
Kenyan police fired teargas to disperse stone-throwing supporters of the country’s main presidential contenders on Monday after the candidates made a final push to win votes in a race deemed too close to call. Scuffles briefly flared shortly after President Mwai Kibaki and his opposition challenger, Raila Odinga, addressed huge rallies in the capital.
No image available
/ 25 December 2007
Convalescing Cuban leader Fidel Castro has gained weight, is exercising twice daily and is in full control of his mental faculties in a signal of his recovery, his brother Raul Castro said on Monday. Fidel Castro, who took power in a 1959 revolution, handed over temporarily to Raul Castro in July 2006 after undergoing stomach surgery.
No image available
/ 25 December 2007
Christians around the world celebrated Christmas on Tuesday as the Catholic leader in the Holy Land pleaded for peace in the Middle East and Pope Benedict XVI spoke against selfishness. Iraqi Christians meanwhile celebrated a fearful Christmas in the shadow of suicide bombings and sectarian violence.
No image available
/ 20 December 2007
More than a century ago, a war correspondent called Winston Churchill was dispatched to Cuba to cover the conflict with Spain. ”It may be that future years will see the island as it would be now, had England never lost it — a Cuba free and prosperous under just laws and patriotic administration, throwing open her ports to the commerce of the world, sending her ponies to Hurlingham and her cricketers to Lord’s.”
No image available
/ 18 December 2007
Ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro, who has not been seen in public for 16 months, suggested on Monday he might give up his formal leadership posts — the first time he has spoken of his possible retirement since he fell ill. Castro, who took power in a 1959 revolution, handed over temporarily to his brother Raul Castro in July 2006.
No image available
/ 14 October 2007
”It’s not like we’re England,” said the old woman sharing a flask of coffee with her middle-aged daughter on the train from Geneva to Zurich. ”They had the colonies, and we didn’t,” she adds, to explain the nature of Britain’s racial mix and why Switzerland does not need one. ”I worry,” says her daughter, ”there will be a putsch against him.”
No image available
/ 12 October 2007
President Thabo Mbeki on Friday paid tribute to Argentina-born revolutionary Che Guevara, who died at the age of 39 in Bolivia forty years ago. More than anything else, Guevara’s was a life dedicated to the genuine independence of all countries, Mbeki said in his weekly online newsletter, ANC Today.
No image available
/ 12 October 2007
![]()
Had things turned out differently, one of the seats in the press box in the Stade de France last Sunday night might have been occupied by a 79-year-old Argentinian newspaperman whose own rugby career was blighted by asthma. But life held different challenges for Che Guevara.
Communist Cuba paid tribute on Monday to its poster boy, Ernesto ”Che” Guevara, 40 years after the guerrilla fighter was captured and executed in Bolivia. The man he helped to power in Cuba’s 1959 revolution, Fidel Castro, was too ill to attend a memorial rally at the mausoleum where Guevara’s remains were placed when they were dug up from an unmarked Bolivian grave in 1997.
The bearded image of guerrilla leader Ernesto ”Che” Guevara has become a pop icon splashed on mugs, T-shirts and even bikinis 40 years after his death, and Vallegrande, a Bolivian town, is out to cash in on the marketing frenzy. In central Bolivia, where Guevara battled the army before he was captured and killed, tour operators offer a chance to retrace his final steps on the ”Che Trail”.
Forty years after the death of Ernesto ”Che” Guevara, the turbulent life of Cuba’s revolutionary hero continues to inspire films and books, while his stoic image and self-sacrifice have become iconic for leftists worldwide. His legacy remains as vivid today in communist-ruled Cuba as it was, with schoolchildren still instructed to pledge each morning that: ”Pioneers for communism, we will be like Che.”
If it achieves nothing else, the visit by the South Korean President, Roh Moo-hyun, will at least make its mark on one of North Korea’s most spectacular and unusual tourist attractions. The International Friendship Exhibition Hall is a monument to the price that dignitaries pay when courting one of the world’s most reclusive nations.
No image available
/ 22 September 2007
Fidel Castro looked alert and healthier during an hour-long interview taped and aired on Cuban television on Friday, responding to rumours of his death with a defiant ”here I am”. In the first video of the ailing 81-year-old revolutionary seen in more than three months, a pale Castro stayed seated the entire time.
No image available
/ 21 September 2007
Cuban leader Fidel Castro may have dropped out of sight, but his trademark green military cap is everywhere. Nearly 49 years after Castro’s socialist revolution, the Fidel cap is selling like hot cakes to tourists visiting Cuba, and more and more young Cubans are also snatching them up.
I have observed several of the agency’s clandestine actions around the world over the past 30 years or so, and there is a good deal of truth …