Foreign medics freed from a Libyan jail were tortured into confessing they deliberately infected hundreds of Libyan children with HIV, a son of Libyan leader Moammar Gadaffi said in remarks broadcast on Thursday. The five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor were freed on July 24 after a deal between Tripoli and the European Union.
Al-Qaeda threatened in an internet statement on Monday to escalate attacks against the ”enemies of Allah” in North African countries, warning Muslims to stay away from government sites. ”The Mujahedin [holy warriors] … have many hidden surprises for the enemies of Allah in the countries of the Islamic Maghreb, which will come in an escalating sequence,” said al-Qaeda.
Al-Qaeda’s second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahri, on Tuesday threatened more attacks on Britain two weeks after failed bombings in London and Glasgow. ”I say to [former British prime minister Tony] Blair’s successor that the policy of your predecessor drew catastrophes in Afghanistan and Iraq,” he said in a tape posted on a website.
The five cricket officials — including South Africa’s Rudi Koertzen — who caused the final overs of the Cricket World Cup final in Barbados to be played in near darkness have been banned from officiating in the World Twenty20 tournament in South Africa in September.
Widely touted as the Middle East’s very own Orlando, "Dubailand", a cluster of mega-billion-dollar projects, is gradually emerging across the desert sands of the booming Gulf emirate. Faced with a dwindling wealth of oil, Dubai has taken on a new challenge of larger-than-life projects in line with its ambition to become the region’s main business and leisure hub.
A critical desalination plant supplying water to Oman’s capital has regained most of its production capacity, easing the cyclone-damaged Muscat’s water shortage, officials and news reports said on Tuesday. Oman lost more than -million in oil revenues when exports were halted by last week’s Cyclone Gonu.
The International Cricket Council (ICC) board has unanimously approved a recommendation for Cricket South Africa to nominate an acting president following the death of Percy Sonn last month. The nominee, once approved, will assume the role of acting president until the ICC’s annual conference of 2008.
A brother of a slain Taliban leader said al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden was alive and well and that he had received a letter of condolence from him after his brother was killed in May. ”He is alive, active and well,” Haji Mansour Dadullah, a Taliban militant leader, said of Bin Laden.
A Somali Islamist group on Monday claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing that targeted the Horn of Africa country’s prime minister. Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi has accused al-Qaeda of being behind Sunday’s suicide bombing that killed seven people outside his home in Mogadishu.
The United States will face worse attacks than those on September 11 2001 if it does not heed al-Qaeda demands effectively allowing the group control over Muslim countries, a US Islamist militant said on Tuesday. Adam Gadahn, a California-born convert to Islam, appeared in a video posted on the internet.
An al-Qaeda front group in Europe threatened on Tuesday to launch bloody attacks in France in response to the election of Nicolas Sarkozy as president. ”As you have chosen the crusader and Zionist Sarkozy as a leader … we in the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades warn you that the coming days will see a bloody jihadist campaign,” the group’s ”Europe division” said.
Iraqi militants holding a German woman and her adult son hostage said on Tuesday they were giving Germany a new deadline of 10 days to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan or the two would be killed. The group had issued an earlier ultimatum on March 10 that it would kill the pair if Berlin failed to pull out its troops from Afghanistan.
A militant Islamist group in Iraq has threatened in a videotape showing two purported German hostages to execute them if the Berlin government fails to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan. The Kataeb Siham al-Haq (Righteous Arrows Battalions) said in the videotape posted on Saturday on an Islamist website: "We give the German government 10 days from the date of this statement …"
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/ 27 February 2007
Roger Federer took over the number one ranking in men’s tennis more than three years ago, and he shows no signs of letting it go. The 10-time Grand Slam champion reached a new milestone on Monday when he broke Jimmy Connors’s 30-year-old mark with his 161st week at the top of the ATP rankings.
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/ 23 February 2007
Justine Henin-Hardenne, the year-end world number one, lost her second surname and her first position following her recent separation from Pierre-Yves Hardenne. This week, Henin, the world number two, faced up publicly to the pain in her life, revealing that the shock has been so great that she has no aim to regain the top spot from Maria Sharapova just yet.
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/ 11 February 2007
Pakistan’s Shahid Afridi has been banned for four one-day internationals (ODIs) after being found guilty of breaching the International Cricket Council’s (ICC) code of conduct during his side’s ODI against South Africa at Centurion. The charge was laid by ICC CEO Malcolm Speed.
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/ 5 February 2007
Henrik Stenson again demonstrated his affection for the European Tour’s ”Gulf Swing” by winning the Dubai Desert Classic by one stroke on Sunday. The Dubai-based Swede, who has finished in the top eight in the last six tournaments in the Middle East, overcame gusts of up to 30kph to shoot a closing 68 for a 19-under-par tally of 269
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/ 5 February 2007
Chief executive Malcolm Speed says the International Cricket Council (ICC) took on a sizeable task by agreeing to stage the World Cup on nine different Caribbean islands and has called for understanding when problems arise. ”There will be logistical problems, everyone knows that,” Speed told Reuters.
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/ 4 February 2007
Ernie Els pledged to move heaven and earth on Sunday to repel any challenge from old nemesis Tiger Woods in the final round of the Dubai Desert Classic. The South African will take a three stroke lead over the American into the last 18 holes. ”I’m up for it. I’m really looking forward to it and I’d like to win it pretty badly,” said Els.
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/ 3 February 2007
Three-times champion Ernie Els was breathing down the neck of surprise leader Ross Fisher of Britain when the Dubai Desert Classic second round was completed on Saturday morning. The 37-year-old South African, two strokes adrift when fading light forced him off the course with four holes to play on Friday, finished with three pars and a birdie four at the last to record a seven-under 65.
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/ 2 February 2007
Britain’s Ross Fisher maintained his unlikely surge in the Dubai Desert Classic on Friday, a second successive seven-under-par 65 securing a two-stroke lead at the end of a day interrupted by bad weather. Three-time champion Ernie Els was second on 12-under with four holes left when darkness fell. Earlier, play was halted for over two hours due to a thunderstorm at the Emirates Golf Club.
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/ 1 February 2007
Ernie Els edged first round honours over Tiger Woods at the Dubai Desert Classic on Thursday but they were both upstaged by joint leaders Graeme McDowell of Northern Ireland and Ross Fisher of England. Woods defeated Els in a dramatic play-off for his first Gulf title last year and the South African is out for revenge after finally getting back to full fitness.
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/ 1 February 2007
Ernie Els got off to a storming start in the first round of the Dubai Desert Classic on Thursday with a run of an eagle and three birdies from the third hole. That more than offset a bogey four at the second and hoisted the three-times former winner into a joint share of the early lead.
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/ 31 January 2007
Retief Goosen has won the European Tour’s golfer-of-the-month award for January after a spectacular birdie-eagle finish clinched victory at the Qatar Masters. The South African took the honour ahead of Jo’burg Open winner Ariel Canete of Argentina, the tour said in a news release on Wednesday.
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/ 31 January 2007
Ernie Els says he must ignore the Tiger Woods factor if he is to harbour realistic hopes of securing an unprecedented fourth Dubai Desert Classic trophy this week. ”He is so far ahead of me right now but I have got new goals and I want to stay focused on them,” the 37-year-old South African told reporters on the eve of the European Tour event.
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/ 31 January 2007
Abu Dhabi, looking to tap into the thriving tourism market in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), plans to offer a cultural bonanza rather than follow Dubai in focusing on shopping holidays. Centrepiece of the quiet emirate’s mega project to lure tourists is the construction of four museums, including a Guggenheim and, perhaps, a local version of the famous Louvre of Paris, as well as an art centre.
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/ 23 January 2007
Osama bin Laden’s right-hand man Ayman al-Zawahiri on Tuesday mocked United States President George Bush’s plan to send extra troops to Iraq, saying he should send his entire army to be annihilated. In an online video message, the al-Qaeda second-in-command also accused the US of being behind the deployment of Ethiopian troops in Somalia.
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/ 19 January 2007
At least two workers were killed and 57 injured when a fire broke out on Thursday in a tower block under construction in Dubai, the trading hub of the United Arab Emirates, state news agency WAM said. An official at Rashid hospital said four workers were killed in the fire.
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/ 18 January 2007
At least four workers were killed and 39 injured when a fire broke out on Thursday in a tower under construction in Dubai, the trading hub of the United Arab Emirates, a hospital official and witnesses said. Dozens of workers were trapped by thick smoke as rescue crews tried to reach them. Witnesses said they saw a man fall from one of the 37-storey building’s upper floors.
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/ 17 January 2007
Ashwell Prince, who scored his sixth Test hundred in South Africa’s win over Pakistan in Centurion, is now within touching distance of a place in the top ten of the LG International Cricket Council player rankings for Test batsmen. The left-hander has risen three spots to eleventh position, his highest-ever placing on the list, and is now breathing down the neck of teammate Jacques Kallis.
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/ 10 January 2007
Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf, who entered Mogadishu for the first time this week, defended a United States air raid on his country, saying in comments published on Wednesday it targeted al-Qaeda militants. Many people died in the US strike on a southern Somali village occupied by fleeing Islamists believed to be sheltering al-Qaeda suspects.
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/ 20 December 2006
Al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri said in a new video aired on Wednesday that only jihad (holy war), not elections, can bring about the liberation of the occupied Palestinian territory. "Any road other than jihad will only lead to loss," Osama bin Laden’s right-hand man said in the video broadcast on al-Jazeera television.