KENYANS are still euphoric over the referendum endorsing a progressive new constitution, but the heat generated by its opponents around their main rallying point — abortion rights — is a reminder of the wide gap between law and implementation in Africa, particularly when it concerns women’s rights.

AFRICAN efforts to stabilise Guinea-Bissau, potentially by sending in soldiers, will meet stiff resistance from divided politicians and soldiers accused of providing protection for international drug smugglers.

NAOMI Campbell may be dim-witted and self-centred, and the poor schmuck she gave the diamonds to 13 years ago is in deep trouble even though he never tried to turn them into cash, but she certainly is useful.

IT cannot be proved that the wildfires now devastating western Russia are evidence of global warming. Once-in-a-century extreme weather events happen, on average, once a century.

ON July 22, President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia accused Venezuela of allowing left-wing Colombian rebels to have bases on the Venezuelan side of the 2 000km border between the two countries.

PAUL Ilegems, a retired professor of art history, has a vision of heaven. It involves a simple Belgian pommes frites stand where “human souls ascended eat their fries undisturbed”.

IT MAY seem premature to talk about last-ditch measures to deal with runaway climate change, but Ben Lieberman has it right. Lieberman, an energy expert at the Heritage Foundation, a Washington think-tank, responded to the news that the US Senate will not pass any climate legislation this year by saying: “It’s pretty clear that no post-Kyoto treaty is in the making ­— certainly not in Cancun, and maybe not ever.”

A JOINT French-Mauritanian raid may indicate a hardening of resolve against the Saharan band of al Qaeda’s North African wing, but it also underscores cracks in regional coordination and risks fuelling anti-Western rhetoric.

THE biggest cuts in military spending in decades in Germany, Britain and France could encourage Europe to move closer to a joint defence policy to pool resources and eliminate costly duplication.

IT was a swift reaction. After the Colombian government accused Venezuela of harburing terrorists last week, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez broke off relations with his neighbour.

MONKEY see, monkey do. Soon after France’s National Assembly passed a law making it illegal to wear a full-face veil in public, British MP Philip Hollobone announced a private member’s Bill last weekend that would make it illegal for people to cover their faces in public in Britain.

CAREFULLY picking his way along a narrow alleyway and stepping over a broken sewage pipe in Guinea-Bissau, police commandant Augusto Nhanga points up at the metal grill above him.

WITH Pakistan set to play a central role in any political settlement of the Afghan war due to its sway over the Taliban, India has few options to counter its bitter rival’s influence in the country.

DID Paul Kagame really stop the genocide in Rwanda 16 years ago, or did he just interrupt it for a while?

AS the American withdrawal gains speed, there are fewer American troops in Iraq than in Afghanistan for the first time since 2003.

LANKY and soft-spoken, Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame portrays himself as a modern-day politician who sees social media as championing democracy and development.

AN internationally brokered peace deal that was supposed to transform Sudan into a unified democracy could be about to split Africa’s largest country into two one-party states.

AN internationally brokered peace deal that was supposed to transform Sudan into a unified democracy could be about to split Africa’s largest country into two one-party states.

ON a leafy Colombo corner, surrounded by hundreds of his nationalist supporters and Buddhist monks, Sri Lankan cabinet minister Wimal Weerawansa burns an effigy of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon.

BETWEEEN April and June 1994, an estimated 800 000 Rwandans were killed in the space of 100 days.