World Briefs

Swazi teachers clash with police
MBABANE – Swazi police on Wednesday clashed with striking teachers from a banned trade union who are demanding a 4.5 per cent salary hike, as the country’s economic crisis shows no sign of abating.

Police tried to prevent the deputy president of the banned Trade Union Congress of Swaziland, Sipho Kunene from addressing about 7 000 teachers, who retaliated by pelting them with stones.The teachers formed a human shield to keep the police away from a vehicle that Kunene used as a podium to address the crown in the capital Mbabane.’We long said that we do not care about the economic crisis, we did not cause it but government. We therefore must not be made to pay a price for something we didn’t do,’ union president Sibongile Mazibuko said after the clash.Ben Ali sentenced to lifeTUNIS – A Tunisian court sentenced ousted leader Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, in absentia, to life in prison on Wednesday for presiding over the bloody protest crackdown that ignited the Arab Spring.Former interior minister Rafik Belhaj Kacem and several more of Ben Ali’s inner circle received sentences of up to 15 years in prison, but other key figures saw their charges dismissed, much to the anger of victims’ families.Prosecutors had sought the death penalty for Ben Ali – who fled after his ouster and is living in exile in Saudi Arabia – over the killing of 22 people while clamping down on the central cities of Thala and Kasserine.US increases spy bases in AfricaWASHINGTON – The United States military is expanding a secret network of air bases across Africa in order to spy on al Qaeda and other militant groups, the Washington Post reported.The surveillance is carried out by small, unmarked turboprop planes with hidden state-of-the-art sensors that fly thousands of kilometres between air bases and bush landing strips across the vast continent, it said.The programme, dating back to 2007, underscores the massive expansion of US special forces operations in recent years and the steady militarisation of intelligence operations during the decade-long war on al Qaeda.Bases in Burkina Faso and Mauritania are used to spy on al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, while bases in Uganda are used in the hunt for the Lord’s Resistance Army.