A Palestinian minister lashed out at the international community on Sunday for staying silent over Israel’s deadly incursion into the Gaza Strip, saying it was only encouraging a continuation of the vast operation. Palestinian negotiations minister Saeb Erakat was speaking shortly before an emergency session of the Palestinian Parliament to discuss the situation in the northern Gaza Strip.
Mark Chapman, the man who gunned down John Lennon in New York, could be released from jail this week — a prospect that has drawn protests and even threats against his life from the former Beatle’s fans. Chapman, now 49, was sentenced to 20 years to life after shooting Lennon five times in the back outside the singer’s Manhattan apartment building on December 8, 1980.
Multi-millionaire game farmer John Hume speaks lovingly of his ”insecure” and ”over-sensitive” black rhinos, and yet he is fiercely lobbying to lift a ban on hunting the endangered species. The Zimbabwe-born game farmer stands firmly behind the South African government as it goes before a world body regulating trade in endangered animals this week to ask for 10 hunting licences for adult bulls.
It had everything a high society event should have: an exotic location, a smattering of celebrities, champagne on tap, hundreds of almost priceless objets d’art — and a heist by Europe’s most infamous gem thieves. Detectives believe the gang, which took an estimated £10-million of diamonds from the chic antiques fair held beneath the Champs Elysées in Paris last week, are part of a Balkan-based network known as the Pink Panthers.
A series of unauthorised attempts to free two French journalists held hostage in Iraq for more than six weeks have caused acute embarrassment for President Jacques Chirac and may have jeopardised official negotiations for their release. Confusion surrounds the rescue mission launched independently by a maverick politician from Chirac’s own ruling UMP party, Didier Julia, and his envoy Philip Brett, a former security guard for the extreme-right National Front movement.
Moving from the pulpit to the stage, Desmond Tutu is appearing off-Broadway in a drama blasting the Bush administration’s handling of Guantanamo Bay detainees. The retired South African prelate and Nobel laureate appeared on Saturday night at a tiny theater in lower Manhattan, playing a judge in Guantanamo: Honor Bound To Defend Freedom. The play portrays the plight of British detainees at the United States naval base in Cuba.
Guantanamo ‘failed to prevent attacks’
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.