Insurgents, some believed linked with terror suspect Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, unleashed attacks on Thursday on four cities across Iraq leaving more than 66 dead and 268 wounded in an apparently coordinated onslaught. The heaviest death toll of Thursday morning’s violence was in Baquba, northeast of the capital, where at least 20 Iraqis and two US soldiers were killed.
A group of about 20 human rights groups led by Amnesty International is asking South African President Thabo Mbeki and other African leaders to put pressure on Zimbabwe over its human rights record. ”We are urging African states to take a more public stand in resolving the crisis in Zimbabwe,” said Amnesty’s spokesperson in South Africa, Samkelo Mokhine.
Another blow to press freedom in Zim
Listed South African entertainment and media group Johnnic Communications on Thursday announced a 108% improvement in attributable earnings to R187-million for the year ended June 30. Basic headline earnings per share were 13% higher at 170 cents from 151 cents before.
An urgent inquiry was launched in Cyprus on Wednesday night after an undercover police operation exposed a group of up to 100 tourists, including Britons, taking part in what was described a mass orgy aboard a cruise ship off the island. The scenes, shown on local TV and described as ”debauched”, were broadcast after being caught on camera in the police sting.
The eight British sailors and marines detained in Iran are expected to be freed on Thursday, the British Foreign Office said after talks on their release were suspended late on Wednesday. British diplomats from the embassy in Tehran have also visited the men, who are being held in the town of Bandar Mahshahr.
The Bush administration’s thinking about the use of torture in the war on terror was on display on Wednesday after the White House released a file of documents on the treatment of detainees. The memos offer a glimpse of the decision-making process at the highest levels of the Pentagon, the department of justice and the White House.
Exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama has told the Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) fast food chain to stay out of Tibet over alleged cruelty to animals, an animal rights group said on Thursday. The Dalai Lama has written a letter to KFC parent company Yum! Brands chief executive David Novak imploring him to abandon plans to expand KFC restaurants into Tibet.
Young South African women are being given false job offers to lure them into prostitution in Macau, a former Portuguese colony now under Chinese control, says the International Organisation for Migration (IOM). IOM official Jonathan Martens told a conference in Benoni that women were promised employment, luxury accommodation, and payment of between $10 000 and $20 000.
Michael Melvill, the pilot of the first manned private trip to the edge of space this week, has told how he feared he would not return from the landmark mission.
The South African-born Melvill told the New York Times, that SpaceShipOne lurched to the left and suffered a key control system failure that left him feeling ”deathly afraid”.
The United States senate was used for a bizarre ritual in which the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, the head of the Unification church, was ”crowned” and declared himself the messiah in the presence of more than a dozen Republican and Democratic members of Congress, it was reported on Wednesday.