| Christmas Getaways
The imminent arrival of Christmas might have you thinking that escape is impossible, but there's still time to make your excuses and flee the festive train smash that is M&S pants, brassy baubles and monotonously merry melodies. So pack your bags, break out your flexible friend and check out the late availability as you prepare to go AWOL and flee the excesses for something a little more exotic.
Cape Town
Cape Town must be seen to be believed; a relaxed, easy going, yet sophisticated city with an abundance of everything that is great about the majestic African continent. Dominated by the brooding Table Mountain and set on a peninsula of rocky heights and lush valleys where the Atlantic and Indian oceans converge, this city oozes cool, especially around the De Waterkant gay scene which is famed for its spectacular views, village atmosphere and its diverse and eclectic mix of gay pubs, clubs and venues.
Today in history
-- Today is Wednesday, Nov. 21, the 325th day of 2007. There are 40 days left in the year. Today's Highlight in History: On Nov. 21, 1927, picketing strikers at the Columbine Mine in northern Colorado were fired on by state police; six miners were killed. On this date: In 1789, North Carolina became the 12th state to ratify the U.S. Constitution. In 1922, Rebecca L. Felton of Georgia was sworn in as the first woman to serve in the U.S. Senate. In 1934, the Cole Porter musical "Anything Goes," starring Ethel Merman as Reno Sweeney, opened in New York. In 1942, the Alaska Highway was formally opened. In 1964, the upper level of New York's Verrazano Narrows Bridge, which connected Brooklyn and Staten Island, was opened.
Quote of the day
Marc Rudov: Women should give up a right for every inch of skin revealed at work. Beware the pink posseHundreds of Indian women clad in pink saris roam the streets carrying sticks and axes. Gone for the holidayBroadsheet will return next week. Happy Thanksgiving from BroadsheetTips for ethical travel, sexy turkey. Saudi court stands by sentence of rape victim Clinton, Obama demand less lame response by U.S. "They are done to destroy women"How to help victims of sexual violence in Congo A solution to the stem cell debate?Two teams of scientists have figured out how to make ordinary human skin cells act like embryonic stem cells. Who you callin' a "ho," Santa?Jolly Old Saint Nick muzzled in Australia. Can hair color make other people act dumb?A study suggests that just the sight of blond women can "make men less clever." Halftime harassmentA ritual at Giants Stadium involves crowds of men clamoring for women to take off their shirts.
Will new food labels prove too hard to swallow?
NEW food logos aimed at helping consumers make ethical decisions could lead to "choice overload" for bewildered shoppers, it was warned yesterday. Sainsbury's has announced it will introduce labelling on products containing sustainable palm oil from next year. It is just one of a range of environmentally-friendly measures unveiled by the supermarket giant, which will also include labelling its fish fingers as "Marine Stewardship Council approved". The move on palm oil has been welcomed by environmentalists concerned at the effects of deforestation in its production. Judith Batchelar, Sainsbury's brand director, said, "From soap to biscuits, palm oil is in thousands of everyday food and beauty items wherever you shop. "Rather than banning the use of palm oil, we want to find a sustainable solution that will stop deforestation while continuing to support the communities that rely on its production.
Twentieth, Yahoo! Plan Joint Show
An online powerhouse is getting ready to take on TV. Twentieth Television has entered a deal with Internet mega-site Yahoo! to develop a series featuring popular Web videos for syndication that could air next year. According to sources close to the situation, the potential series, which is in active development by the distributor, would be a fast-paced program featuring the hottest videos from around the Web. Should the project move out of the development stage, it would be offered as a Monday-through-Friday show to stations and launch next fall. Executives at News Corp.'s Twentieth have been keen in recent years to seek out pre-branded series that will help attract increasingly fickle audiences to their shows. The series now joins a number of other shows in development by the company being pegged for the fall 2008 season, including Monday-through-Friday strips with comedian Steve Harvey and another with Donald Trump, both of whom are already household names.
That's the best thing we've read all year - part two
Andrew Anthony's urgent, polemical memoir The Fall-Out (Cape) is a subtle, delicately nuanced, impassioned, courageous, elegantly formulated and far-reaching examination of the state of our ailing nation. After that, I wasn't sure I needed to read an 800-page history of post-independence India - in fact, I was pretty sure I didn't - but Ramachandra Guha's epic, India after Gandhi (Macmillan), quickly became gripping and extraordinarily moving. Early parts of Guha's narrative were complemented nicely by some of the closing parts of Peter Clarke's similarly absorbing The Last Thousand Days of the British Empire (Allen Lane). .
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