Prisoner interrogations at Guantánamo Bay, the controversial United States military detention centre where guards have been accused of brutality and torture, have not prevented a single terrorist attack, according to a senior Pentagon intelligence officer who worked at the heart of the US war on terror.
American warnings that Darfur is heading for an apocalyptic humanitarian catastrophe have been widely exaggerated by administration officials, it is alleged by international aid workers in Sudan. Washington’s desire for a regime change in Khartoum has biased their reports, it is claimed.
Israeli tanks and troops began the largest reoccupation of northern Gaza on Friday since the Palestinian uprising began four years ago. Ariel Sharon ordered the tanks in to prevent Hamas scuppering his plan to withdraw Jewish settlers from the territory and impose an emasculated state on the Palestinians.
It was unacceptable that South African universities produced the same number of PhDs today as they did 30 years ago, Education Minister Naledi Pandor said on Friday. Local universities were not producing enough post-graduate students, she told a research indaba at the University of Pretoria, according to a statement issued by her office.
The body of a Kenyan girl, who allegedly died after she was raped by a British soldier, will be exhumed at the weekend for forensic analysis, the British High Commission said on Friday, insisting that justice would be pursued till the end. On September 20, a Kenyan court ordered the body of 16-year-old Mantoi Lekoloi Kaunda to be exhumed, six years after she was buried, for analysis to find out if she died as a result of an alleged rape by a British soldier in 1998.
American forces launched an offensive to seize back control of the Iraqi town of Samarra on Friday, claiming to have killed almost 100 insurgents and captured more than 30 in several hours of bombing raids and street fighting. US forces also carried out air and ground strikes on Friday night deep into the Sadr City slum in east Baghdad, while jets mounted another raid on the rebel city of Falluja, killing at least three civilians.
John Kerry was on Friday widely declared the winner of the first presidential debate, after an aggressive performance left a scowling President George Bush sometimes groping for words. It was, however, too early to tell whether the debate, at Miami University, would be enough for Senator Kerry to close the president’s five to 10 percentage point lead in time for the election a month today.
A Zimbabwe court on Friday ordered the release without charge of 46 women who were arrested earlier this week for staging a protest march between the second city of Bulawayo and Harare, a lawyer said. Seven others, including prominent activist Jenni Williams, who were arrested on Wednesday in Harare, have yet to make a court appearance.
Three people were arrested in connection with child pornography in KwaZulu-Natal on Friday when provincial government offices and houses of suspected employees were raided, police said. Police spokesperson Superintendent Vishnu Naidoo confirmed that a man was arrested in Ladysmith on Friday afternoon while two other ”very senior” officials were arrested in Nqutu and Umdloti.
United States software giant Microsoft insisted on Friday that nobody would want to buy its Windows operating system without Media Player, in an appeal against a European Union ruling that it had abused its market dominance. The Brussels commission also required Microsoft to provide competitors with the information they needed to enable their products to communicate with Windows.