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/ 18 February 2005
A Hong Kong mother is seeking HK 000 ( 400) compensation from fast food giant KFC, alleging a rat in one of its outlets scratched and hurt her two-year-old son, press reports said on Friday. Tsui Fung-fai said a fist-sized black rat dropped ”from the sky” onto her son while they were eating at a KFC restaurant in Hong Kong’s New Territories area last year.
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/ 18 February 2005
Few sights are as comical as a low-wattage academic astride his war-donkey. Michiel Heyns, once of Stellenbosch University, came wobbling into the plagiarism lists last week on a beast that had clearly gone lame. Sir Michiel was jousting in favour of redefining plagiarism as a steal-by-numbers system.
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/ 18 February 2005
Zimbabwe police wearing riot-control gear on Thursday beat up protesters, arresting 14 of them, during a march in downtown Harare to demand free and fair elections, the organisers said. Police charged on the 200 protesters as they approached a city park, distributing flyers and carrying placards during the march organised by the National Constitutional Assembly.
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/ 18 February 2005
Israel’s Attorney General lifted the threat of indictment against Ariel Sharon on Thursday in a scandal over illegal campaign funds but charged the prime minister’s son, Omri, with fraud and other crimes in the same case. Omri Sharon faces up to seven years in jail if convicted of charges over the alleged laundering of illegal campaign contributions.
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/ 18 February 2005
New evidence has emerged that United States forces in Afghanistan engaged in widespread Abu Ghraib-style abuse, taking ”trophy photographs” of detainees and carrying out rape and sexual humiliation. The abuses took place in the main detention centre at Bagram, near the capital Kabul, as well as at a smaller US installation near Kandahar.
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/ 18 February 2005
John Negroponte, the United States Ambassador in Baghdad, was on Thursday nominated as the first director of national intelligence, making him potentially the most powerful spy chief in US history. Announcing Negroponte’s nomination President George Bush described intelligence as ”our first line of defence” in the struggle with terrorists.
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/ 18 February 2005
Those who attack American interests around the globe, who incite peaceful native populations to fanaticism and violence, and who undermine democracy must expect swift and decisive action by the United States and its military. This was the word from US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Friday as she outlined her country’s plans to invade Manchester.
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/ 18 February 2005
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) on Thursday hit out at the government over its alleged "persistent kowtowing to employers’ blackmail". Cosatu’s statement came a week after President Thabo Mbeki, in his State of the Nation address, mooted the relaxation of South Africa’s labour market to boost small business in the country.
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/ 18 February 2005
Those hoping for daybreak after 14 years of chaos in Somalia realised this week they were experiencing a false dawn. The slow move homewards of the new government of Abdullahi Yusuf was to have started next week. Now it appears to be facing further delays. Somali warlords have made their point: the country is still too dangerous for the government to work in.
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/ 18 February 2005
The International Centre for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) has urged the Congolese government to prosecute former militia leaders instead of reappointing them to high-ranking positions in the newly integrated national army. "If the Democratic Republic of the Congo is to achieve a lasting peace, it must not appoint individuals to the army when there is evidence that they may be responsible for serious abuses," said the president of the ICTJ.