The Pakistani army is paralysed by the growing Taliban threat and some retired officers are covertly aiding the militants, according to a former CIA officer. Soldiers posted to Waziristan, a tribal area that hosts an estimated 2 000 al-Qaeda fighters, are ”huddling in their bases, doing nothing”, said Art Keller.
Federal authorities in the United States are under pressure to make a final effort to bring unsolved race crimes from the civil rights era to trial after a 71-year-old former Ku Klux Klansman was found guilty of charges over the 1964 deaths of two black teenagers.
More than 450 slave workers — many of them maimed, burned and mentally scarred — have been rescued from Chinese brick factories in an investigation into illegal labour camps, it emerged on Friday. The victims, including children as young as 14, were reportedly abducted or tricked into labouring at the kilns.
Jubilant Hamas militants cemented their domination over Gaza on Friday, but appeared to make conciliatory overtures to their Fatah opponents after a week of intense fighting that has effectively broken Palestine in two. Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader in Gaza, called for new talks with the Fatah leader and Palestinian president.
Nasa reported major progress on glitches in a critical computer system on the International Space Station on Friday as astronauts repaired insulation damage to the space shuttle Atlantis during a spacewalk. Four of the six boxes or ”lanes” that comprise the computer were up and running.
First National Bank (FNB) was granted leave on Friday to appeal a high court decision that outlawed a savings product which has created 27 millionaires. Bank spokesperson Xolisa Vapi said the Supreme Court of Appeal granted the leave to appeal a high court decision against the ”million-a-month account”.
There may no be such a thing as a free lunch in real life, but it is different on the internet where companies are falling over themselves to give you free services such as photo hosting, video storage, email, word processing and spreadsheets. A common feature of these services is that what we do is increasingly being stored on the web.
Concern over the elitist nature of pay TV was the gist of reactions on Friday to an exclusive broadcast deal between SuperSport and the Premier Soccer League (PSL). The furore was described by the PSL as ”a mountain manufactured out of a molehill”, as 140 games would be sold to free-to-air broadcasters.
Another week, another public-relations cluster bomb for Sony. The company has been accused of "desecration" by the Church of England thanks to the appearance of Manchester Cathedral in the PlayStation 3 shooter <i>Resistance: Fall of Man</i>, and is facing possible legal action.
It is not often that something makes me laugh so hard I cannot breathe, but a recent piece on "wikigroaning" did. It consists simply of a list of paired topics on Wikipedia: the game is just to guess which has the longer and more detailed entry and thus is more important to the nerds who write Wikipedia.