Ahead of a career retrospective, Sue Williamson tells how the US pair are dragging her country ‘through the mud’
For more than 50 years, Sue Williamson’s art has been shining a light on South Africa’s problems – first to campaign against the apartheid state, and then to question how far the country has progressed in reconciliation and remembrance.
But as she prepares for her first retrospective exhibition, the 84-year-old artist has a new pair of targets in sight: US president Donald Trump and his billionaire, South African-born adviser, Elon Musk.
Continue reading...Archaeologist believes his ‘find of the century’ – of Pharaoh Thutmose II – could be surpassed by ongoing excavation
To uncover the location of one long-lost pharaoh’s tomb is a career-defining moment for an archaeologist. But to find a second is the stuff of dreams.
Last week British archaeologist Piers Litherland announced the find of the century – the first discovery of a rock-cut pharaoh’s tomb in Egypt since Tutankhamun’s in 1922.
Continue reading...Sale of the miner, which is now valued at $4bn, may be delayed following ‘really, really difficult’ market
The world’s biggest diamond miner, De Beers, cost its parent company almost $3bn last year as the growth in lab-grown stones continues to take the shine off the industry.
Anglo American was forced to write down the value of the renowned gem producer for a second consecutive year as its chief executive admitted the diamond markets had proved “really, really difficult for the company”.
Continue reading...As administration cuts off resources from African countries to contain outbreak, workers say ‘everybody’s lost’
As the Trump administration dismantles the US Agency for International Development (USAid) and retreats from funding global public health efforts, mpox – formerly known as monkeypox – is at greater risk of becoming a wider global emergency, according to aid workers and global health experts.
“It’s a real mistake not to be doing everything we can to control this while we’re still able to,” said Stephen Morse, a professor of epidemiology at Columbia University focusing on risk assessment of infectious diseases. “Taking huge steps backwards is only going to make everything worse.”
Continue reading...Uncovering rock-cut tomb of Thutmose II hailed as most significant discovery since Tutankhamun in 1922
It was when British archaeologist Piers Litherland saw that the ceiling of the burial chamber was painted blue with yellow stars that he realised he had just discovered the first rock-cut tomb of an Egyptian pharaoh to be found in more than a century.
Litherland had been exploring the western wadis near the Valley of the Kings in Egypt for more than a decade when he discovered a staircase that led to the tomb, now known to have belonged to Thutmose II, who reigned from 1493 to 1479BC.
Continue reading...Authorities blame crypto exchange, already facing four counts of tax evasion in the country, for currency woes
Nigeria has filed a lawsuit seeking to compel Binance to pay $79.5bn for economic losses the country’s government says were caused by the cryptocurrency exchange’s operations there and $2bn in back taxes, court documents showed on Wednesday.
Authorities blame Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, for Nigeria’s currency woes and detained two of its executives in 2024 after crypto websites emerged as platforms of choice for trading the local naira currency.
Continue reading...John Feeley launches stinging critique of US president’s bully-boy approach to Latin America
The former US ambassador to Panama has launched a stinging critique of Donald Trump’s approach towards Latin America, comparing his conduct to that of the ruthless and egotistical fictional mob boss Tony Soprano.
In the first month of his presidency, the US president has shocked some observers with his aggressive focus on a region many expected him to largely ignore. Early steps have included threatening to “take back” the Panama Canal, accusing Mexico’s government of being in cahoots with narco-traffickers, sending an envoy to meet the Venezuelan dictator, Nicolás Maduro, and clashing with Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, over deportation flights.
Continue reading...Cúcuta imposes curfew as National Liberation Army (ELN) clashes with army in province bordering Venezuela
Residents of a violence-torn province in northern Colombia are bracing for further bloodshed as a conflict between rival armed groups spread to a regional capital in scenes residents said they had not witnessed since the cartel unrest of the 1990s.
The mayor of Cúcuta imposed a 48-hour curfew on the population of 1 million inhabitants in the hope of regaining control of the city after combatants of Colombia’s largest armed group, the National Liberation Army (ELN), attacked police stations with assault rifles and grenades and destroyed toll booths with car bombs.
Continue reading...FBI says Aurora Phelps met men online for dating then drugged them and stole cars and money
A woman used online dating apps to lure at least four older men to meet her in person, drugged them with sedatives and stole hundreds of thousands of dollars in a “sinister” romance scheme, FBI officials in Las Vegas said on Friday.
Three of the men died, authorities said, and she has been charged in one of their deaths.
Continue reading...Democrat Jasmine Crockett calls it ‘really wild’ that it is foreign leaders who are speaking truth to power
The congresswoman Jasmine Crockett has revealed she is “rooting” for Canada and Mexico over Donald Trump in their attempts to stand up to him, saying it is “really wild” to find herself in that position given he is the president of the US.
“They are really the ones that are speaking truth to power right now,” the Democratic representative from Texas said on Friday on the popular Breakfast Club podcast, alluding to the political feuds Trump has engaged in with the US’s two North American neighbors during the first month of his second presidency. “They can see what it is and they were like, ‘We are not messing with this crazy regime.’”
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