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South Africa to resume Zimbabwe deportations

SW Radio Africa
Thezimbabwean.co.uk
Fri, 03 Sep 2010 03:31 CDT

South Africa's cabinet has announced that a moratorium on deportations of Zimbabwean nationals in the country will be reversed, prompting an angry response from rights groups.

In a post-cabinet announcement on Thursday, South African government spokesperson Themba Maseko said that deportations to Zimbabwe will commence after the 31st December this year, also adding that a special dispensation put in place for Zimbabweans will cease to operate. Under this dispensation Zimbabweans could enter South Africa and work for a total of three months before renewing the temporary permits.

The moratorium on deportations was introduced in April last year, a few months after the formation of the unity government in Zimbabwe. The special dispensation was also announced in an effort to control the number of Zimbabweans crossing illegally into South Africa, fleeing the humanitarian crisis and economic meltdown back home. It was hoped that a backlog of migrants seeking asylum status in South Africa would ease if Zimbabweans in the country were given special documents. It is estimated that there are up to four million Zimbabweans living in South Africa, but because of fears of deportations most did not apply for official documentation from Home Affairs.

It was widely believed that the moratorium on deportations was a temporary measure while the government worked at providing the special dispensation permits. But according to refugee rights group PASSOP, those permits were never issued, and most Zimbabweans in South Africa remain undocumented. PASSOP's Braam Hanekom told SW Radio Africa on Thursday that Zimbabweans are still unsuccessfully trying to apply for refugee status. He explained that while there are certain permits that migrants can apply for from the government, most Zimbabweans don't have the money for these applications.

Lawrence Martin
The Globe and Mail
Fri, 03 Sep 2010 00:45 CDT

Insiders say the PM wants Konrad von Finckenstein out well before his term as chair ends. And vice-chair Michel Arpin is being ushered out the door

Last year, as revealed by The Canadian Press, Prime Minister Stephen Harper lunched in New York with Roger Ailes, president of Fox News, and Rupert Murdoch, who owns it. Kory Teneycke, Mr. Harper's former spokesman, was also present at the unannounced event.

Mr. Teneycke later became the point man for Quebecor's Pierre Karl Péladeau in his effort to create a right-wing television network modelled along the lines of Fox News. The new network is a high priority for Mr. Harper, for whom controlling the message has always been - witness his government vetting program - of paramount importance.

In this regard, he scored a fantastic coup when Mr. Teneycke became head, courtesy of Mr. Péladeau, of Sun Media's political coverage. It's not every day that a prime minister sees his one-time spokesperson taking control of a giant media chain's coverage of his government. What, one wonders, will our journalism schools be telling their students about that?

As remarkable as it was, it received scant attention because the focus was on the TV bid. That bid hit a roadblock last month when the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission declared that the top-category type of broadcasting licence being sought by Quebecor would not be available - if at all - until Oct. 1, 2011, at the earliest.

BBC World News
Thu, 02 Sep 2010 11:02 CDT

The UN has postponed the release of a draft report that accuses the Rwandan army of possible genocide in DR Congo.

It follows angry protests from Rwanda about details in the leaked draft, with Rwanda threatening to pull its troops out of UN peacekeeping missions.

The UN high commissioner for human rights says when the report is finally published on 1 October, it will have comments from concerned countries.

Rwanda has described the claims in the report as "insane".

The document, which was due to be published this week, accuses Rwanda's Tutsi-led army of killing Hutus in the Democratic Republic of Congo in the 1990s - acts it says may amount to genocide.

Genocide: Embassy Row

James Morrison
Washington Times
Thu, 02 Sep 2010 19:40 CDT

KENYA'S DEFENSE

Kenya's ambassador to the United States is defending his government's refusal to arrest the president of Sudan on war-crime charges when he visited Kenya for a celebration of the new constitution.

Ambassador Elkanah Odembo argued that Sudan would have exploded into another civil war had Kenya apprehended Sudanese President Omar Bashir at the Aug. 27 ceremony in Nairobi. He did not explain why Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki invited Lt. Gen. Bashir in the first place, nor why Mr. Kibaki kept the visit a secret from Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga and other government ministers.

"Sudan would erupt in a civil war ... I'm willing to put money on it," Mr. Odembo told the National Democratic Institute in Washington earlier this week.

Andrew Heasley & Matt O'Sullivan
Sydney Morning Harold
Thu, 02 Sep 2010 00:57 CDT

The Qantas jet engine that exploded on Tuesday after take-off from San Francisco had not been inspected after safety warnings issued two weeks ago.

The safety bulletins in Australia, Europe and the US had warned of ''uncontained'' engine failure - the technical term for when components are sprayed out of the engine enclosure during a malfunction.

The airworthiness directives were issued for Rolls-Royce RB211 engines, the model fitted to the Qantas 747-400 that was forced to make an emergency landing at San Francisco.

Blasts rock Lahore; at least 28 dead

Nasir Habib
CNN
Wed, 01 Sep 2010 17:05 CDT

Islamabad, Pakistan -- At least 28 people are dead and at least 218 others were injured Wednesday after three blasts during a Shiite procession here, authorities in Pakistan said

Khalid Ranjha, a Lahore government official, said two of the dead are children and two others are women, and seven of those injured are in critical condition.

Gordon Duff
Veteranstoday.com
Sun, 29 Aug 2010 04:48 CDT

Crash Of Airbus 320 Outside Islamabad Now Believed Hijacked, Heading For Nuke Facility

August 29, 2010 Islamabad, Pakistan - Informed sources in the Government of Pakistan have told Veterans Today that they are developing "hard evidence" indicating the Air Blue Airbus 320 that crashed July 28th outside Islamabad was a terrorist hijacking tied to rogue American security forces operating inside that country.

Sources indicate that the plane crash was an unsuccessful hijacking attempt intended to crash into the nuclear weapons facility at Kahuta, outside Islamabad. Such an attack may have been blamed on India and would likely have led to retaliation which could easily have escalated to a nuclear exchange between these two nations that have spent decades at each other's throats.

Suspicions were raised inside Pakistan's military and intelligence organizations when American military contractors employed by Blackwater/Xe showed up on the scene immediately after the crash, seizing the black box and "other materials." There is no confirmation that parachutes or electronic equipment had been removed when Blackwater/Xe security relinquished control of the crash scene to Pakistani investigators.

Royal Television in Islamabad, owned by the brother of the head of Pakistan's powerful JI (Jamate Islami), the Islamic political party, has reported that investigations are underway tying American based contractors to the planning of the attack.

Pakistan air strikes kill scores

Al Jazeera
Tue, 31 Aug 2010 02:50 CDT

Military strikes targetting fighters kill between 40 to 45 people in northwest the country.

A Pakistani air strike targeting fighters believed to have been preparing for imminent suicide attacks has killed between 40 to 45 people in a northwestern the country.

"Security forces today carried out a successful operation against militants in the Tirah valley of Khyber Agency," a senior Pakistani security official told AFP news agency on Tuesday.

"Militant hideouts, a training centre, an illegal FM radio station and eight vehicles prepared for suicide attack were destroyed in air strikes," he added.

Sampath Perera
World Socialist Web Site
Tue, 31 Aug 2010 20:07 CDT

More than a million additional people fled their homes in the southern Pakistani province of Sindh over the past few days as flood waters threatened further cities and towns. While authorities reported yesterday that waters were receding at least temporarily, large areas of the country are devastated and around 20 million people displaced.

Nineteen out of the 23 districts in Sindh are badly affected. "More than seven million people have been displaced in Sindh since August 3, one million only in the past two days," provincial relief commissioner Ghulam Ali Pasha told Agence France Presse (AFP).

Floodwaters inundated the town of Sujawal on Sunday, forcing its 100,000 residents to flee. Local authorities attempted to minimise the impact but water levels in the town centre were up to 1.5 metres and over 3 metres in surrounding villages. Disaster management official Hadi Baksh told the Daily Times that half a million flood victims were camped at Makli. Most lacked any shelter and were in desperate need of food and clean water.

Saeed Shah
McClatchy Newspapers
Tue, 31 Aug 2010 19:33 CDT

U.S. forces lost 22 soldiers in Afghanistan, mostly to roadside bombs, since Friday, marking a bloody step-up in the insurgency as a major U.S.-led offensive seeks to capture the spiritual homeland of the Taliban movement in Kandahar.

The U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan said it's gaining ground against the insurgents, but violence is rising across the country, including in areas that were considered relatively safe.

Five more U.S. soldiers were killed Tuesday, while three Afghan workers for the British charity Oxfam were killed by a roadside bomb in Badakhshan, which had been one of the safer places in the country.

The coalition says that casualties are rising as they push against the strongholds of the Taliban in the south and the allied Haqqani network in the east. The majority of casualties - some 60 percent - this year and in 2009 came from improvised explosive devices planted on roads and paths.

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"The free press is the mother of all our liberties and of our progress under liberty" Adlai E. Stevenson

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"This is, in theory, still a free country, but our politically correct, censorious times are such that many of us tremble to give vent to perfectly acceptable views for fear of condemnation. Freedom of speech is thereby imperiled, big questions go undebated, and great lies become accepted, unequivocally as great truths." Simon Heffer in The Daily Mail, 7 June 2000

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