Interrogators at Guantánamo Bay degraded and abused a key prisoner, forcing him to wear a bra and threatening him with a dog, military investigators claimed on Wednesday. He was also told by interrogators he was a homosexual, forced to dance with a male interrogator, and told his mother and sister were whores.
Since Lemmer discovered that he is married to Mrs Glenda Sherman of Nutcracker Grove, and that he has been deceased since August 1986, he’s been waiting to see if any public apology was going to be issued by the improbably inept Department of Home Affairs. So it was gratifying this week to see the department take time off from its busy schedule to ask forgiveness in the television advert.
Like an earthquake, the London bombings have brought an aftershock — and it came this week. The police announcement that the explosions on July 7 on the underground and on the Number 30 bus were, apparently, the work of British suicide bombers is the most shocking news to come since the attacks themselves. It is also the bleakest possible development.
The controversial Operation Murambatsvina and President Thabo Mbeki’s role in the Zimbabwean crisis has heightened divisions within Zimbabwe’s two major political parties, and has caused ructions within the diaspora. Opposition Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai is taking strain for ”betraying” the party by meeting Mbeki in Pretoria.
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Nasa called off Wednesday’s launch of Discovery — the first by a US space shuttle since the 2003 Columbia disaster — after detecting a faulty fuel sensor. The flight was postponed two hours and 20 minutes before the scheduled lift-off. The seven crew members had already boarded Discovery.
Municipal officials and councillors found guilty of misusing public funds will be strictly dealt with, Matjhabeng executive mayor Serake Leeu warned on Wednesday. He was reacting to a report by the Free State auditor general’s office into alleged irregularities in debt collecting at the Matjhabeng local municipality in 2001 and 2002.
The first thing many passengers heard was a huge bang that shocked them out of their sleep. They saw something right out of a nightmare. ”We saw several coaches skidded off the track and there were bodies lying scattered across the railway yard,” said one survivor of Pakistan’s rail disaster on Wednesday, which left up to 150 people dead.
Former president Nelson Mandela is an inspiration to the youth to strive for greatness rather than material success.
The Zimbabwean government’s demolition of houses and policy of forced removals must be stopped, the South African Council of Churches (SACC) said on Wednesday. ”In God’s name, stop Operation Murambatsvina,” the SACC central committee concluded after a two-day meeting held in Johannesburg.