A fading photo tossed on an empty bed is all that remains of the interrupted lives in Spinkai, a desolate Pakistani village that has endured the wrath of the army’s ”collective punishment”. In the image, a laughing young man in a jet-black turban brandishes his rifle like a trophy. Beside him stand two little girls in bright frocks, giggling with glee.
Powerset on Sunday unveiled tools for searching Wikipedia that use conversational phrasing instead of keywords, marking the first step of its challenge to established web-search services such as Google. Powerset’s technology breaks down the meaning of words and sentences into related concepts, freeing users from always needing to type the exact words they want to find.
The only time Cuba’s Fidel Castro is known to have played golf was in 1961, in a stunt thumbing his nose at the United States. Now that Fidel has handed over power to his brother, Raul, Communist Cuba is setting aside any ideological objections and is embracing golf, the most capitalist of sports.
It has been a busy week for United States President George Bush. He has shuttled across the country, faced a barrage of questions from a hounding press pack and made some tough spending decisions. But the focus of the action was not a bold new policy initiative. Instead, the dramatic upsurge of media interest has been because of the wedding of his daughter.
A newly declassified 2003 Justice Department memo gave United States military interrogators broad authority to use extreme methods in questioning al-Qaeda detainees, US media said on Wednesday. The memo argued that the US president’s wartime authority exempted them from laws banning cruel treatment.
The head of the main United States spy agency has warned that al-Qaeda is training operatives who ”look Western” and could enter the United States undetected to conduct terrorist attacks. Central Intelligence Agency Director General Michael Hayden said the terror network has shed its operational reliance on mastermind Osama bin Laden.
The sprawling prison complex at Guantánamo Bay looks from a distance like many of the hastily built resorts round the Caribbean, the camps occupying a narrow strip of sand by the palm-lined sea-shore, with fencing to keep the locals out. But through the military checkpoint, the grimness of the world’s most infamous prison becomes apparent.
Osama bin Laden urged Palestinians on Thursday to use ”iron and fire” to end an Israeli blockade of Gaza, in a recording after the Vatican rejected accusations by the al-Qaeda chief of a ”new crusade”. In an audiotape broadcast by the Qatar-based al-Jazeera satellite channel on Thursday, bin Laden urged Muslims to keep up the struggle against US forces in Iraq
The Bush administration, caught out by the rise of Hamas, embarked on a secret project for the armed overthrow of the Islamist government in Gaza, it emerged on Monday. Vanity Fair reports in its April edition that President George Bush signed off on a plan for the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, to remove the Hamas authorities in Gaza.
South Africa’s rating of 63,2% ranks it 52nd globally on the Heritage Foundation 2008 Index of Economic Freedom. In a statement released on Monday, Century 21 South Africa — the local chapter of the world’s largest real-estate brand — said the index, which covers 162 countries, took 10 specific freedoms into account.
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/ 19 February 2008
Ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro said on Tuesday that he will not return to lead the country as president or commander-in-chief, retiring as head of state 49 years after he seized power in an armed revolution. Castro (81) said he would not seek a new presidential term when the National Assembly meets on February 24.
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/ 13 February 2008
Hezbollah military commander Imad Moughniyah was killed by a car bomb in Damascus on Tuesday, the Lebanese group said, announcing the death of the man believed to be behind Western hostage taking in Lebanon in the 1980s. Hezbollah, which is backed by Syria and Iran, accused Israel of killing Moughniyah, thought to be in his late 40s.
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/ 11 February 2008
The Pentagon on Monday sought murder and conspiracy charges against the alleged planner of the September 11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and five others and will ask they be executed if convicted. Mohammed, a Pakistani national better known as KSM, has said he planned every aspect of the September 11 attacks.
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/ 28 January 2008
Gunmen took hostage up to 250 Pakistani schoolchildren in the north-western town of Bannu on Monday after taking refuge in the school following a clash with police, officials said. Violence has spread across Pakistan in recent months, seeping out of remote tribal regions that are sanctuaries for al-Qaeda and Taliban militants and into cities and towns.
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/ 8 December 2007
The intelligence came from an exotic variety of sources: there was the so-called Laptop of Death; there was the Iranian commander who mysteriously disappeared in Turkey. But pivotal to the United States investigation into Iran’s suspect nuclear-weapons programme was the work of a little-known intelligence specialist, Thomas Fingar.
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/ 7 December 2007
The CIA destroyed video evidence of the coercive interrogation of al-Qaeda operatives held under its secret rendition programme in order to shield agents from prosecution, it was revealed on Thursday. The decision to destroy two videotapes documenting the use of waterboarding against Abu Zubaydah and another high-value al-Qaeda detainee was made in November 2005.
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/ 21 November 2007
Condoleezza Rice taught crisis management at Stanford University but experts say the top United States diplomat will need more than academic prowess to mediate an end to six decades of Israeli-Palestinian conflict. ”The question is, will she have that diplomatic skill to pull it off?” asked Daniel Levy, a former Israeli mediator.
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/ 13 November 2007
At last Mark Gevisser’s long-awaited biography of Thabo Mbeki is out. For a project that began in 1999 and took eight years to complete, the title <i>The Dream Deferred</i> seems especially apt. As a subject, Mbeki is a walking "writer’s block". Not only is he a densely complex person, as the book confirms, but he shimmers in the light, making it all but impossible to have a single thesis to explain the man.
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/ 9 November 2007
A divided United States Senate confirmed retired judge Michael Mukasey as Attorney General on Thursday, setting aside concerns he might support interrogation methods decried worldwide as torture. On a largely party-line vote of 53-40, the Senate approved his nomination to succeed Alberto Gonzales.
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/ 1 November 2007
United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice meets Israeli and Palestinian leaders this weekend to craft a joint document ahead of a peace conference but she has intentionally set expectations low. US officials expect Rice’s visit will result in a document filled with principles to kick off negotiations on a Palestinian state.
Communist Cuba paid tribute on Monday to its poster boy, Ernesto ”Che” Guevara, 40 years after the guerrilla fighter was captured and executed in Bolivia. The man he helped to power in Cuba’s 1959 revolution, Fidel Castro, was too ill to attend a memorial rally at the mausoleum where Guevara’s remains were placed when they were dug up from an unmarked Bolivian grave in 1997.
The bearded image of guerrilla leader Ernesto ”Che” Guevara has become a pop icon splashed on mugs, T-shirts and even bikinis 40 years after his death, and Vallegrande, a Bolivian town, is out to cash in on the marketing frenzy. In central Bolivia, where Guevara battled the army before he was captured and killed, tour operators offer a chance to retrace his final steps on the ”Che Trail”.
Forty years after the death of Ernesto ”Che” Guevara, the turbulent life of Cuba’s revolutionary hero continues to inspire films and books, while his stoic image and self-sacrifice have become iconic for leftists worldwide. His legacy remains as vivid today in communist-ruled Cuba as it was, with schoolchildren still instructed to pledge each morning that: ”Pioneers for communism, we will be like Che.”
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/ 10 September 2007
Out of sight and mind for almost two decades, inmate number 38699-079 completed his sentence on Sunday an older, frailer figure than the world remembered. Manuel Noriega served out his time at Miami’s Federal Correctional Institution with a gammy leg, his hair dyed and in the uniform of an army which no longer exists, a bogeyman from another era.
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/ 8 September 2007
Osama bin Laden said in a new video marking the sixth anniversary of al-Qaeda’s September 11 attacks that the United States was vulnerable despite its military and economic power, but he made no specific threats. The al-Qaeda leader said US President George Bush was repeating the mistakes of the former Soviet Union by refusing to acknowledge losses in Iraq.
Panama’s former dictator, Manuel Noriega, can be extradited to France for a money-laundering trial after he completes a lengthy jail sentence in Miami next month, a United States judge ruled on Tuesday. France wants to try the 73-year-old for allegedly laundering -million in drug money through French banks.
NOT QUITE THE MOVIE OF THE WEEK: It’s the year of the threequels and this week, it’s the turn of what might be called a thirteenquel: Ocean’s 13, writes Shaun de Waal
I have observed several of the agency’s clandestine actions around the world over the past 30 years or so, and there is a good deal of truth …