MIAMI: A US military spokesman says 84 prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay are on hunger strike. Army Lt Col Samuel House says four hunger strikers are in a hospital on the US base in Cuba for observation. That’s down from six in the hospital a day earlier.
Officials and lawyers for the men have disagreed over the number of hunger strikers since the protest over their indefinite confinement began in February. Lawyers have said nearly all of the 166 prisoners are refusing meals. The number meeting the military’s definition of hunger strike has steadily grown since guards raided a camp April 13 and moved prisoners from a communal section into single cells. House said that 17 of the 84 strikers are being fed liquid nutrients to prevent dangerous weight loss.
Mugabe allies look to seize foreign mines
HARARE: Zimbabwe plans to seize majority stakes in foreign owned mines without paying compensation in a pre-election move that could heighten tension in the unity government and spook investors, a document showed yesterday.
A notice issued by the Indigenisation Ministry headed by Saviour Kasukuwere, a member of President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party, said the “ministry and the government of Zimbabwe would like to revise materially, the policy and law on indigenisation and empowerment.”
“The motivation for this position arises out of the desire to see that the people of Zimbabwe benefit fully, without cost whatsoever, from enterprises that exploit their God-given natural resources.” The current mandatory black ownership policy, passed in 2007 demands that 51 percent of shares in foreign owned companies be ceded to locals.
UK man convicted of selling fake detectors
LONDON: A British businessman was convicted of fraud yesterday after making millions of dollars selling fake bomb-detection equipment based on a golf-ball finder to countries around the world, endangering rather than protecting lives there.
James McCormick, 56, manufactured and sold the hand-held “ADE 651” devices to countries at serious risk from bombings such as Iraq, claiming they could detect explosives, drugs and other substances.
But the detectors had no working components, lacked any basis in science and did not work in accordance with the known laws of physics, London’s Old Bailey court heard. Agencies
