Staff Reporter

Shackled together at the wrist, the two brothers awaited their fate at the lonely jail in Donga Bonga, a cotton-farming backwater near Pakistan’s sealed border with India. They were poor men, barefoot farm labourers with pinched cheeks and calloused hands.

An Iranian government-sponsored body set up to probe the veracity of the Holocaust on Tuesday challenged Europe to hand over documents about the mass slaughter of Jews in World War II, the IRNA state news agency reported. Mohammad Ali Ramin, head of the World Holocaust Foundation, said Austria, Germany and Poland in particular should supply documents.

Six people were found shot dead in a Chinese restaurant in northern Germany on Monday in what police said might have been a triad killing. The bodies of three men and three women, some with their hands bound, were scattered throughout the Lin Yue restaurant in Sittensen, Lower Saxony.

Teachers across Zimbabwe on Monday began an indefinite industrial action to press for better salaries and better working conditions, a union spokesperson said. Raymond Majongwe, secretary general of the radical Progressive Teachers’ Union of Zimbabwe, threatened to bring schooling to a halt if his members’ wage demands are not met by the cash-strapped government.

Two pigs wearing tailor-made wedding outfits "tied the knot" on Monday in a ceremony attracting hundreds of well-wishers at a small town in north-eastern Taiwan. The "bridegroom," an 18kg boar, and his "bride," an 11kg pig, were wed in a lavish ceremony presided over by local magistrate Lu Kuo-hwa.

United States military commanders in Iraq have been forced to adopt new security tactics in the wake of a fresh threat from insurgents after it was confirmed that all four US helicopters that have crashed there in the past two weeks were brought down by ground fire.

Reading the newspapers during the past two weeks could easily have created the impression that the only role South Africa has played since it assumed a non- permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council was to vote against the resolution on Myanmar, writes Xolisa Mabhongo, Chief Director: United Nations (Political) Directorate, Department of Foreign Affairs.

We of the “old establishment” are indeed terrified by the advent of Ronald Suresh Roberts on our shores, as he himself puts it. Here is a post-colonial liberator of impeccable credentials, and handsomely endowed features to boot, who, although, again as he says, we have never had a substantial conversation, takes us on as the major problem in his hitherto life of literary fame and glory in his forcibly adopted native land.

A reader asks: Do you think it’s reasonable that the complaint form for the ombudsman includes the clause: ‘(k) I acknowledge that I may not publish any of the details of my complaint in any form of media and that the Ombudsman may, in his/her sole discretion, decline to continue any investigation if, in his/her […]

Aids-ravaged Zimbabwe plans to expand its free Aids drugs roll-out programme, reaching out to 100 000 more patients by the end of the year, the country’s health minister said. With only 60 000 people currently accessing life-prolonging antiretroviral therapy, Health and Child Welfare Minister David Parirenyatwa said "at least 300 000 people will have access to the drugs by 2010".

An accurate diagnosis normally requires the doctor examining the patient and maybe tissue samples. An Irish doctor, however, has done it while watching television by spotting that a government minister had a tumour in his cheek. The unnamed surgeon from University Hospital, Galway, was at home with his doctor wife before Christmas.

A new split is developing within the European Union over sanctions on the Zimbabwean government, with both France and Portugal considering summit invitations to President Robert Mugabe that would weaken the diplomatic isolation of his regime that Britain is trying to maintain.

The signs are there. We are in a new age of denial. In 1999, President Thabo Mbeki, fresh in office and faced with the spectre of a new struggle, this time against HIV and Aids, turned his face away. He dabbled with fringe science, establishing a panel to attempt to refute that which was accepted by the world: that HIV causes Aids.

Russia’s next president will not be a "successor" but the choice of the people in democratic elections, President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday. "I’ve said there won’t be a successor — there will be candidates. The authorities’ task is to ensure the democratic character of the elections … so that citizens can make their choice," Putin said at his annual news conference.