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/ 14 January 2008
South Africa’s embattled police force on Monday sought to reassure the crime-ridden country after a weekend that saw its police chief placed on extended leave in a widening corruption scandal. The South African Police Service was under intense public scrutiny before it was disclosed last week that Jackie Selebi would face charges of corruption and defeating the course of justice.
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/ 23 December 2007
It all sounds familiar. A newly proclaimed war in a far-off land, the suspension of habeas corpus, and mass arrests of ”potentially dangerous” individuals to protect the nation from ”treason, espionage and sabotage”. Those detained would eventually have the right to a hearing, but one not bound by the rules of law.
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/ 30 November 2007
Randel Parks pushed his hands into the pockets of his jeans and rocked back on the heels of his cowboy boots. ”I’ve been here 30 years,” he said, staring at the ground, ”and I’ve spent most of my adult life working on this property, turning it into my piece of paradise. I’ll be damned if I’m going to let them spoil it.”
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/ 14 November 2007
Chevron, the number-two United States oil company, has agreed to pay -million to resolve criminal and civil liabilities related to procurement of oil under the United Nations oil-for-food programme, US prosecutors said on Wednesday. Chevron will not be prosecuted and will continue to cooperate with investigators, they said.
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/ 30 October 2007
United States State Department investigators looking into the shooting deaths of 17 Iraqis in Baghdad last month offered immunity deals to Blackwater security guards. The investigators from the agency’s investigative arm did not, however, have the authority to offer such immunity grants.
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/ 28 October 2007
A federal grand jury is investigating allegations that magician David Copperfield raped and threatened a Washington state woman at his estate in the Bahamas, a newspaper reported. The Seattle Times reported on Saturday that at least three federal law-enforcement officials, whom the paper did not identify, confirmed the grand jury investigation.
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/ 25 October 2007
California wildfires that have destroyed 1 300 homes and forced the evacuation of 500 000 people raged into a fifth day on Thursday, but firefighters seized on a break in the weather to largely halt the march of destruction. About 15 fires still blazed across the southern part of the state, lighting up the night sky.
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/ 19 October 2007
FBI agents have seized nearly -million in cash from a Las Vegas warehouse owned by illusionist David Copperfield, local media reports said on Thursday. The agents also took a computer hard drive and a memory chip from a digital camera system during Wednesday’s late-night operation.
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/ 12 October 2007
The women’s 100m in Sydney was the first Olympic final I commentated on for the BBC. Marion Jones streaked to a victory so emphatic that the words that came out were an athlete’s reaction to what I’d witnessed: ”Wow! This is the Olympic Games. You’re not supposed to win by that much.”
Iraq has vowed to punish United States security firm Blackwater after a probe found that its guards were not provoked when they opened ”deliberate” fire in Baghdad three weeks ago, killing 17 civilians. The US embassy was tight-lipped on Monday on whether those involved in the September 16 killings would be handed over for prosecution.
The Scorpions crime unit is in the political spotlight again amid reports it was preparing to arrest the nation’s police commissioner, the latest high-profile official targeted by the elite force. Unease over the unit has been building within the ruling African National Congress since President Thabo Mbeki announced the formation of the FBI-style crime unit in 1999.
The United States company at the centre of the scandal over the role of private security guards in Iraq brushed aside accusations that it was a cowboy outfit on Tuesday, even as details emerged about a incident in which an allegedly drunken member was involved in a fatal shooting.
Police investigating this weekend’s nail-bomb attack in the Maldives, which injured a dozen foreign tourists, have now arrested 10 people, officials said on Monday. ”Some of them were trying to flee the country and were apprehended at the airport,” said Mohamed Shareef, a Maldives government spokesman.
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/ 18 September 2007
Chinese and Russian spies are stalking the United States at levels close to those seen during the tense covert espionage duels of the Cold War, the top US intelligence officer warned on Tuesday. Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell was to raise the spectre of a new era of clandestine intelligence wars during a House of Representatives hearing on a contentious new law on wiretapping.
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/ 11 September 2007
One of the world’s most sought after cocaine kingpins was hunted down and captured in Colombia on Monday in the toughest blow against the country’s drugs trade in more than a decade. Diego Montoya, who goes by the alias ”Don Diego”, was the top boss of the Norte del Valle cartel, believed to be responsible for two-thirds of the cocaine exported from Colombia to Europe and the US.
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/ 2 September 2007
The key piece of material evidence used by prosecutors to implicate Libya in the Lockerbie bombing has emerged as a probable fake. Nearly two decades after Pan Am flight 103 exploded over Scotland, allegations of political intrigue and shoddy investigative work are being levelled at the British government, the FBI and the Scottish police.
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/ 2 September 2007
It all came to an end under a clear blue Idaho sky, in the harsh gaze of a dozen TV cameras. Senator Larry Craig, who started the week as a revered stalwart of the conservative wing of the Republican party, ended it with his career in ruins as he announced his resignation on Saturday.
A group Johannesburg metro police and South African Police Service officers were receiving specialised training from the United States’s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in Johannesburg on Wednesday. The course on detecting and preventing money laundering forms part of a continuing skills transfer from the US law enforcement authorities.
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
MOVIE OF THE WEEK: Shaun de Waal on Nicholas Cage’s very well-made rubbish of a movie, <i>Next</i>