The Pentagon on Saturday said it transferred five prisoners from Guantanamo Bay to Afghanistan, leaving about 445 detainees at the naval base in Cuba. ”These detainees were all recommended for transfer due to multiple review processes conducted at Guantanamo Bay,” the Pentagon said in a statement posted on its website on Saturday.
Tiger Woods recovered from a rare run of bogeys to pull within one shot of leader Stewart Cink on Saturday after the third round of the World Golf Championships Bridgestone Invitational. Woods, the overnight leader, stunningly made four straight bogeys from the par-three fifth at Firestone Country Club — his worst stretch of holes in a decade.
When a gang of seabird-killing seals ate the main tourist draw of Lamberts Bay, residents of the small South African town called in a surfer, an artist and a flock of fake gannets to save the day. Cape gannets had been breeding on a tiny island off Lamberts Bay, on the Atlantic coast 250km north of Cape Town, since the early 1900s, becoming a profitable — albeit raucous and smelly — part of the landscape.
Anyone wanting to throw away their cellphone can do it in style and may even win a medal — at the Mobile Phone Throwing World Championship, Finland’s latest contribution to offbeat athleticism. Originally a local event in this small town close to the Russian border, the seventh annual contest on Saturday drew about 100 throwers from as far afield as Canada, Russia and Belgium.
An Austrian girl held captive in a windowless cell for eight years before escaping said she had ”sexual contact” with her kidnapper, police said on Saturday. Federal police spokesperson Erich Zwettler had no further details on the sexual contact disclosed by Natascha Kampusch, now 18.
The apology by former apartheid minister Adriaan Vlok for atrocities committed under his command, was a watershed moment for South Africa, his former deputy said on Saturday. It was revealed on Saturday that Vlok had asked Reverend Frank Chikane, director general of the presidency, for forgiveness this month.
Staying one step ahead of the assassins is a nail-biting business, says Maulvi Ghulam Muhammad, one of Afghanistan’s most senior Islamic clerics. Armed bodyguards stand outside his office in the southern city of Kandahar and visitors are frisked. By day he varies his route to work and keeps vigilant; at night he slips between safe houses.
Chad ordered United States energy giant Chevron and Malaysia’s Petronas on Saturday to leave the country within 24 hours for failing to honour tax obligations, a move apparently aimed at increasing control over its oil output. The surprise move followed Chad’s decision to create a new national oil company which it said should become a partner in the country’s existing oil-producing consortium.
In a break with the past, the youthful leader of Britain’s main opposition Conservative Party on Sunday renounced Margaret Thatcher’s sympathetic stance on apartheid-era South Africa. She famously branded Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress as ”terrorists”.
Scientists in South Africa are exploring whether one of the country’s most precious commodities, gold, could hold the key in the battle against diseases such as HIV/Aids, malaria and cancer. Once developed, the drugs could be considered as a potential choice of therapy for individuals infected with HIV.