Tripoli, Libya
Woman tells of rape: A Libyan woman burst into a hotel full of foreign reporters last week to tell a horrific story of gang rape by Muammar al-Qaddafi’s thugs. Her face streaming with tears, Iman al-Obeidi, 26, said she was detained at a checkpoint, handcuffed, and raped by 15 soldiers. “They even defecated and urinated on me,” she said. “The Qaddafi militiamen violated my honor.” Government minders quickly tackled Obeidi and dragged her from the room; they later called her drunk, mentally ill, and a possible prostitute. Obeidi’s parents told Al-Jazeera their daughter is now being held by Qaddafi’s forces in a government compound, facing charges of slander.
Lilongwe, Malawi
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Madonna sued: Workers laid off from Madonna’s abandoned project to build an elite school for 400 girls in Malawi are suing her for wrongful termination. Madonna’s Raising Malawi charity canceled plans to build the $15 million school two months ago, and Madonna said at the time that she’d decided she wanted to educate “thousands, not hundreds,” of Malawian girls. Last week, The New York Times reported that the project was scrapped after an audit showed that some $3.8 million had been spent on huge salaries, lavish offices, and cars with private chauffeurs for the school’s top staff. The charity’s executive director, a boyfriend of Madonna’s former fitness trainer, quit last year while under investigation for mismanagement. Several of the workers who received the inflated salaries are among those now suing.
Samunge, Tanzania
Miracle worker needs break: A retired Lutheran pastor said this week that he would accept no new “patients” until he could catch up with the backlog of desperate Tanzanians clamoring for his miracle potion. The Rev. Ambilikile “Babu” Mwasapile, 76, started selling the medicine, which he says can cure everything from cancer to AIDS, for 30 cents a dose just a few months ago. Now tens of thousands of people are camped out along the road to his remote village in a line stretching 16 miles; several dozen have died waiting to see him. Tanzania outlawed witch doctors in 2009 after a rash of murders of albino people, whose body parts are used in potions. But the government said that because Mwasapile uses only herbs in his concoction, he may keep practicing.
Sanaa, Yemen
Exit plan for Saleh: Hundreds of thousands of Yemenis, including crowds of niqab-clad women, protested in cities across Yemen this week, demanding that President Ali Abdullah Saleh step down. Abandoned by many of his generals and ambassadors, Saleh offered this week to transfer his powers to a caretaker government if he could remain in a ceremonial role until elections are held. The opposition is considering the offer, but protesters continue to demand his immediate resignation. They accuse Saleh of being behind an explosion at a munitions factory this week that killed more than 150 people, saying he is trying to sow chaos so he can cling to power. The U.S. is reportedly trying to negotiate an exit for Saleh that would keep his relatives in charge of counterterrorism forces, which have been crucial to the fight against al Qaida’s active Yemeni branch.
Kabul
New corruption charges: Family members of President Hamid Karzai and his top officials took millions from the Kabul Bank to spend on personal projects, an internal report by the Afghan Central Bank shows. Karzai cronies were given interest-free loans with no repayment schedule—essentially, free money. Karzai’s brother took $18 million, the bank’s CEO took another $18 million, and a vice president’s relatives got $19 million. The bank’s account statements in Kabul were fake; the real books were in Dubai. After some of the fraud was exposed last fall, the bank suffered a run on deposits and collapsed. It will be liquidated this month under IMF orders.
Hong Kong
‘Milk shake murderer’ found guilty: An American woman has been sentenced to life in prison for murdering her husband, a U.S. investment banker, in a case that has riveted Hong Kong for years. Prosecutors said that in 2003, Nancy Kissel drugged Robert Kissel with sedatives in a strawberry milk shake, then bludgeoned him to death with a heavy statuette so she could collect millions in life insurance and live with her new American lover. The body was found rolled in a carpet in a storage room at the couple’s luxury apartment complex. Defense lawyers argued that Kissel was mentally ill and had been abused by her husband. The tale of the rich expatriate couple has inspired several Chinese books and a movie.
Moscow
Don’t change the clocks: Russians have sprung forward for the last time. The government announced last week that the country will remain on daylight saving time from now on. President Dmitri Medvedev said that changing the clocks twice a year was disturbing people’s biorhythms and causing health problems. “And that’s not to mention the poor cows, who don’t understand when milkmaids are coming to milk them,” he said. Last year, Medvedev cut the number of time zones in Russia from 11 to nine in a bid to improve government efficiency across the vast land. He is now considering further reducing the number to five.
