Randall Mikkelsen

The Guantánamo military prison guards call it a ''cocktail,'' the mix of faeces, urine and spit that inmates hurl at them.

An interrogation video of Osama bin Laden's driver showed Salim Hamdan denying under questioning in a dark cell that he worked for al-Qaeda.

United States President George Bush and his top policymakers exaggerated Saddam Hussein's links to terrorism, a Senate committee reported on Thursday.

Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf conceded that a gunman may have shot Benazir Bhutto but said the opposition leader exposed herself to danger and bore responsibility for her death, CBS News said on Saturday. Musharraf was also quoted as telling the CBS 60 Minutes programme that his government did everything it could to provide security for Bhutto.

An injured survivor and relatives of three Iraqis killed in Baghdad on September 16 when employees of private security company Blackwater USA opened fire on civilians sued the firm in a United States court on Thursday. The Centre for Constitutional Rights said it filed the suit charging that Blackwater and its affiliates violated US law in committing ''extrajudicial killings and war crimes''.

Osama bin Laden said in a new video marking the sixth anniversary of al-Qaeda's September 11 attacks that the United States was vulnerable despite its military and economic power, but he made no specific threats. The al-Qaeda leader said US President George Bush was repeating the mistakes of the former Soviet Union by refusing to acknowledge losses in Iraq.

Long lines and long counts threaten to mar next month's United States congressional elections as millions of Americans put new voting machines and rules to the test, election officials and experts say. The result could be delays in knowing whether Democrats capture one or both houses of the US Congress.