DETAINEE’S APPEAL: In a rare direct appeal from Guantanamo Bay, a prisoner from western China says the United States is holding him and fellow Chinese Muslims in harsh conditions, even though authorities told them in 2004 and 2005 that they were innocent and would be set free. Abdulghappar Turkistani says in the letter, obtained by The Associated Press, that he and other Uighurs in Guantanamo were being held in cramped and windowless cells.
GORILLAS IN PERIL: A ranger in Congo’s Virunga National Park has been arrested on charges of masterminding the massacre of endangered mountain gorillas, conservationists said. Honore Mashagiro is the chief suspect in the slaying last summer of 10 gorillas that belonged to a group known to environmentalists as the Rugendo family.
QUEEN TO IRELAND: Queen Elizabeth II will visit the Republic of Ireland for the first time, most likely next year, Irish President Mary McAleese said. No British monarch has visited the territory of the Republic of Ireland since 1911, a decade before the island’s partition into a British, mostly Protestant north and an independent, predominantly Roman Catholic south.
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Page compiled from Tribune news services
