From the Daily Sun, Nigeria’s King of the Tabloids, women speak on excessive heat and their marital obligations:

My sister, this weather is something else. In fact, I sleep naked every night. My husband is worse because he complains about the weather so much because he is so used to the air conditioner. Mind you, that doesn’t disturb us from meeting at all. You are married, you are married. The weather would not make any responsible woman to deny her husband.

Here.

From The New York Times:

The Fatah project went ahead despite warnings from experts that it could not succeed because the underground terrain was shattered and unstable.

It continued chewing up astonishing amounts of cash when the predicted problems bogged the work down, with a contract that allowed crews to charge as much as $100,000 a day as they waited on standby.

The company in charge engaged in what some American officials saw as a self-serving attempt to limit communications with the government until all the money was gone.

And until Mr. Sanders went to Al Fatah, the Army Corps of Engineers, which administered the project, allowed the show to go on for months, even as individual Corps officials said they repeatedly voiced doubts about its chances of success.

The Halliburton subsidiary, KBR, formerly Kellogg Brown & Root, had commissioned a geotechnical report that warned in August 2003 that it would be courting disaster to drill without extensive underground tests.

“No driller in his right mind would have gone ahead,” said Mr. Sanders, a geologist who came across the report when he arrived at the site.

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From the Washington Post:

As he left, national intelligence director John Negroponte, surrounded by stiff-armed bodyguards, ignored a reporter’s shouted question about leaks. The closest the director got to controversy was when he was asked by an audience member (the questions were filtered by a moderator) about the warrantless wiretapping program.

“Yes, well,” the director replied, then cleared his throat and started again. He assured his audience that “there are very, very rigorous safeguards and oversight that are built into the execution of these programs” — without mentioning that such safeguards did not include informing most members of Congress or the courts.

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From the Cape Times:

Mossel Bay: The 1 046 cyclists in the 2006 Cape Epic had a baptism of rain, mud and more mud on the first day of their eight-day mountain bike race that started in Knysna on Saturday.

They were so dirty I’m sure even their mothers wouldn’t have recognised them.

Here.

From the New York Times Magazine:

When I spoke to Kai-Fu Lee in Google’s Beijing offices, there were moments that to me felt jarring. One minute he sounded like a freedom-loving Googler, arguing that the Internet inherently empowers its users. But the next minute he sounded more like Jack Ma of Alibaba — insisting that the Chinese have no interest in rocking the boat. It is a circular logic I encountered again and again while talking to China’s Internet executives: we don’t feel bad about filtering political results because our users aren’t looking for that stuff anyway.

They may be right about their users’ behavior. But you could just as easily argue that their users are incurious because they’re cowed. Who would openly search for illegal content in a public Internet cafe — or even at home, since the government requires that every person with personal Internet access register his name and phone number with the government for tracking purposes? It is also possible that the government’s crackdown on the Internet could become more intense if the country’s huge population of poor farmers begins agitating online. The government is reasonably tolerant of well-educated professionals online. But the farmers, upset about corrupt local officials, are serious activists, and they pose a real threat to Beijing; they staged 70,000 demonstrations in 2004, many of which the government violently suppressed.

Here.

From the Daily Sun, Nigeria’s King of the Tabloids:

Bimbo Akinyele
If by age 29-32, I am still single? Then it must be a curse. Ehn! God forbid sha. That is not my portion. I know there are ladies who are in the habit of snubbing men. I am really sorry for them. They don’t realise that, unfortunately, we are just a seasonal merchandise. Once your season comes and goes, and you fail to grab it, you are likely to bite your fingers in regret. For me o, I will not wait until it is late before I start to pray and fast. It is very important and I know it.

Here.