A Japanese brewery has produced a beer based on a 4,400-year-old Egyptian recipe translated from ancient hieroglyphics.

The country's second biggest beer maker, The Kirin Brewery Co says The Old Kingdom Beer has no froth, a dark tea colour and contains 10% alcohol.

I have the pleasure to share my testimony with you, having seen your contact from the Internet. I am Barrister james ovie , the legal adviser to late Mr. and Mrs. Bright Williams, a British couple that lived in my Country Nigeria for 25 years before they both died in the plane crash late last year. These couples were good Christians, they so dedicated to God but they had no child till they died. Throughout their stay in my country, they acquired a lot of properties like lands, house properties, etc.

As their legal adviser, before their death, the husband Mr. Bright Williams instructed me to write his WILL. Because they had no child, they dedicated their wealth to God. According to the WILL, the properties have to be sold and the money be given out to a ministry for the work of God. As their legal adviser, all the documents for the properties were in my care. He gave me the authority to sell the properties and give out the fund to the Ministries for the work of God.

In short, I sold all the properties after their death, as instructed by Mr. Bright Williams before his death. And as matter of fact, after I sold all their properties, I realized more than $10,000,000.00 [...] But Instead of giving the main fund out for the work of God as instructed to me by the owner before his death. I converted the fund to myself with the intention of investing the fund abroad for my personal use.

Patrick Nyaruwata, the chairman of the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans' Association (ZNLWVA), told journalists in Harare that his organisation would use force to stop the street protests.

"We have stood aside and observed you (the MDC) for too long and this time we will not. This time, using our own military experience, we will mobilise against you. I do not mince my words. The consequences for any mass action will be grave," he said.

"We will co-ordinate with the state security agents to fight you off. Remember most top security agents in defence, the police and the CIO (Central Intelligence Organisation) are war veterans, and we will be co-ordinating with them," he added.

This may be a sign that the tactics of the farm invasions are now being unleashed against the MDC - a measure that has a perverse sort of logic from Mugabe's point of view, given his constant allegations that the MDC is in league with the commercial farmers. As with the farm takeovers, it is likely that much of the dirty work of suppressing the MDC will be done by "militants" and "war veterans" who will ignore court orders and who the government will claim to be unable to control. In fact, though, the government will merely be unwilling.

When he became a teenager, Tamir was once again a victim of sexual abuse, this time perpetrated by one of the members of the Jaffa family. He didn't dare to complain. His life in the house became hell. He fled and didn't return to them...

For about year he lived alternately in the street or in the homes of friends - children who usually weren't much better off than he was. He had a Jewish girlfriend his age from Bat Yam, with a father who was a drug addict and a mother who was depressive and barely functioned. The two neglected children became close. They spent days and nights together, in the streets of Jaffa, and not only there. "We were in Eilat, we went north, to Haifa, we would sleep outdoors in all kinds of places. At the age of 11 we would travel in buses all day long, eat what we found, sometimes steal some food. She didn't want to call me Mohammed. She's the one who invented the name Tamir. I liked that name. I decided that I would keep it. Every once in a while we would return to her house. To rest. But it was impossible to rest. It was difficult there. Because her father used drugs all the time."

Between the ages of eight and 21, Tamir was arrested five times by the Jaffa police. When they asked him to whom he belonged, he would answer defiantly - to no one.

On January 15, the case came up before Judge Nira Lidsky for a decision. Lidsky insisted on understanding: Whose boy is this? Where does he belong? Where does he live? From where did he show up in Israel and when? What would be the significance of any sentence she would impose on him? After receiving answers and hearing the arguments of the prosecution, she said that she was stopping the legal proceedings, and read into the minutes the following unprecedented words:

"... The accused has been in detention since July 2002 and was indicted after admitting to the accusation ... I have been informed that the accused has been wandering around by himself in Israel since he was about eight and a half years old, without parents, and without a family, `adopted' over the years by various families who exploited his situation. I asked for a review from the Probation Service, since although the accused is a native of Gaza, his father apparently lives in Europe and there is no information about his mother and the rest of his family. The upshot: The accused's place of residence is - nowhere.

"I believe that is unconscionable that any person shouldn't have a legal right of residence anywhere in the world; that for a person who came to Israel, I don't know how, at the age of eight and a half, and who is now 21, no solution can be found ... and there is a danger to his life if he is simply sent across state borders. Regarding the crimes in the indictment ... let the accused be punished as he deserves. But I will not sentence him until I know what will be done with him afterward. I am postponing the conclusion of his trial and asking the Interior Ministry to deal with his case as quickly as possible."

The attorneys were astonished. The members of the organization had a hard time believing their ears. Yasur says that were it not for normative constraints, he would have jumped on the judge and kissed her.

Nes Ammim... was established in 1963 at the initiative of a Dutch physician, Johan Pilon. Its residents come from Europe (Holland, Switzerland, Germany), usually for a three-year stay. The community's economy is based on donations and income from the guest house and conference center, where activities that usually fall into the category of "coexistence" take place... As Christians, the people of Nes Ammim recognize Jesus' Jewish roots.

Dr Graham Dominy, the head of the South African National Archives, told BuaNews in an exclusive interview that AU chairperson Thabo Mbeki, who is passionate about the continent's rich cultural heritage, had agreed to help establish a trust fund for a library to be built in Mali for the preservation of the Timbuktu manuscripts.

The Arabic manuscripts, dating back to the 13th and 14th century and housed at the Ahmed Baba library, are a spectacular treasure of ancient documentation about astrology, science, economics, culture, and geography.

The manuscripts - written in Arabic script (although there are some that are written in local indigenous languages) are kept at the Sankore Mosque and the Gingery-Ber Mosque.

Satguru Maharaj Ji, the founder of One Love Family, has described the re-election of President Olusegun Obasanjo for a second term as a good omen for Nigerians.

The self-acclaimed Perfect Living Master said at a press conference in Lagos at the weekend that it was revealed to him 10 years ago that Nigeria was "The New Holy Land of the Universe" and "No War Zone" has come to pass with the re-election of Obasanjo to usher in this new holy land.

He said Obasanjo had a divine assignment to accomplish and has been found worthy by the Creator to actualise the goal in Nigeria.

From among the possible candidates, they must find one who is capable of filling Aharon Barak's shoes - someone with an international reputation whose prestige will enhance the Supreme Court's stature. If this candidate comes from academia, he or she should be promoted even above others with more seniority.

Widney Brown, Deputy Program Director for HRW, conducted a substantial proportion of the research documented in the report, and says homophobia has become a very "politicised" topic in the region.

In Namibia, the President and a number of politicians have in the past publicly vilified the gay community, interestingly enough, at totally unrelated occasions.

Brown, however, commended civil society in Namibia for speaking out against this kind of defamation, unlike in Zimbabwe, where she says, they are too scared to do so.

The mass action, to take the form of street demonstrations, will involve the MDC, the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA), the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, Transparency International-Zimbabwe (TIZ) and the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU).

NCA spokesman Douglas Mwonzora yesterday confirmed that there were plans by the five organisations to stage a "massive" mass action to force Mugabe out.

Gift Chimanikire, the MDC deputy secretary-general, also confirmed that his party was working with other civic groups to force Mugabe out.

"Yes, we are working with a number of partners, but I feel very uncomfortable to discuss the strategies because you should know that we are dealing with a rogue regime. We won't get anywhere if we start talking about our strategies in public," he said.

[T]he union will have a stabilisation force under a common defence and uniform foreign policy, and states that the region's bargaining power on international issues would be enhanced. The union, if effected, will demilitarise politics, pursue a multi-party system of governance and favour free market economy.

A Commonwealth mediation team at the weekend stepped into Swaziland's "rule of law" crisis by bringing King Mswati III together with five of the six South African judges who resigned from the country's Court of Appeal.

But while the government has agreed to temporarily abide by some of the court's earlier decisions, the judges said they would not return to work until the palace displayed a greater commitment to the rule of law.

There has been no Court of Appeal, the kingdom's highest judicial body, since the six-judge bench resigned en masse in November after the palace insisted that traditional authorities were more powerful than the courts.

Prime Minister Sibusiso Dlamini issued a statement on 28 November rejecting two appeal court rulings, and blasted the judges as foreigners influenced by an unnamed agenda to compromise Swaziland's absolute monarchy.

On a more serious note, something that occurred to me is how anti-Semitism differs from pretty much all other forms of bigotry and racism. Typically, the targets of racism are denigrated: blacks are stupid, Mexicans are lazy, Arabs are backwards murderers, etc. Conversely, anti-Semites tend to portray Jews as being all powerful: Jews control the American government, Jews control the British government, Jews control Hollywood and the media, Jews are using communism to take over the world, Jews are capitalist imperialists, etc. I suppose that we should be flattered that these people fear our alleged omnipotence, but I find that I'm unable to be so.