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GEMMA SIEFF?Weekly Review |
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Contributed by Gemma Sieff
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Burma's junta claimed that peace and stability had been restored following its crackdown on mass pro-democracy protests in which at least 30 people, but likely far more, were killed. Up to 6,000 monks had been arrested, Internet service to the country was almost completely cut off, and the army was paying 20,000 kyat to the families of non-protesters who had been accidentally killed. ?Myanmar people,? said a demoralized taxi driver, ?have no blood in their veins.? 1
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Sylvester Stallone, filming the sequel to ?Rambo? near the Burmese border, described the country as ?a hellhole beyond your wildest dreams.?6
Three thousand two hundred South African gold miners were rescued without injury after a power cable accident trapped them underground; the last group of miners emerged within 40 hours of the accident, dehydrated and exhausted, singing and stamping their feet.7
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It was reported that the U.S. Justice Department, despite calling torture ?abhorrent? in 2004, had secretly endorsed brutal interrogation techniques on terror suspects,9
and the Iraqi government launched an official investigation into the role of U.S. military contractor Blackwater in last month's civilian shootings in Baghdad, calling the incident a deliberate crime and raising the number of people killed in the shootings from 11 to 17.10
In Iowa,
Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson continued to attest to the existence of WMDs in Iraq. ?We can't forget the fact that although at a particular point in time we never found any WMD down there, [Saddam Hussein] clearly had had WMD,? he said; Thompson ended his speech by asking for applause.11
Republican Senator Larry Craig was selected for induction into the Idaho Hall of Fame and announced that he would not resign from the Senate, despite being denied his request to withdraw his guilty plea of disorderly conduct resulting from a sex sting at an airport men's room.12
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