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/ 5 December 2005
Prominent British playwright Harold Pinter, winner of this year’s Nobel prize for literature, has been taken to a London hospital, his agent said on Monday. Pinter’s doctors have already forbidden the 75-year-old from travelling to Stockholm this week to attend a Nobel prize ceremony and banquet because of ill health.
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/ 5 December 2005
The trial in Nairobi of six men, including a priest, accused of murdering a septugenarian Italian bishop in central Kenya earlier this year hit a snag on Monday when one of the defendents claimed to have lost his hearing under police torture. Over prosecution objections, Nairobi High Court Nicholas Ombinja adjourned the trial, which had been scheduled to start on Monday.
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/ 5 December 2005
The South African residential property market continues to be buoyant, although the growth in house prices has eased substantially from last year’s peak, Standard Bank economists Elna Moolman and Gina Schoeman said in the latest residential
property gauge. The economists noted that the macroeconomic environment and consumers’ sound balance sheets remain supportive of a firm housing market.
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/ 5 December 2005
A city of more than half a million people was forced to cut off its water supply as a toxic slick slowly moved down one of China’s large rivers towards the Russian border, state media said on Monday. The taps were turned off Sunday in Jiamusi, home to 550 000 people, as the potentially lethal chemical pool approached along the Songhua river.
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/ 5 December 2005
Australian researchers said on Monday they had scientifically proven a long-suspected link between emotional stress and illnesses ranging from the common cold to cancer. The group’s findings were published in Monday’s edition of the Journal of Experimental Medicine.
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/ 5 December 2005
Picking their way through muddy puddles, United Nations envoy Jan Egeland and his team on Monday toured a suburb of the Zimbabwean capital Harare where thousands are living in plastic shacks after being made homeless by the government’s controversial urban clean-up campaign.
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/ 5 December 2005
Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao was expected to announce an order for Airbus airliners worth about seven billion dollars in Paris on Monday, a day after a deal that could see some Airbus aircraft built in China. According to sources close to the negotiations, the order entails China buying over 100 A320 aircraft, the mid-range, 150-seat workhorse of the Airbus fleet.
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/ 5 December 2005
An Australian bank apologised on Monday to staff upset at being told how to trim nose hair and hide fat legs. The Commonwealth Bank’s ”Grooming Handbook” declared flesh-coloured knickers were in but shiny stockings were out. Rings were also acceptable, but no more than two per hand, it said.
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/ 5 December 2005
Subsidies paid to cotton producers, especially in the United States, prompted an impassioned plea for a fairer deal on trade for Africa at a weekend Franco-African summit, where President Jacques Chirac lent his voice to the campaign. ”African farmers must receive a fair reward for their work,” Chirac said here, days before a key ministerial meeting in Hong Kong on global free trade negotiations.
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/ 5 December 2005
Sri Lankan troops and police stepped up security on Monday following a spate of attacks blamed on the Tamil Tigers that killed 12 people over the weekend, a military official said. Troops in the island’s embattled northern and eastern regions as well as other parts of the island were asked to maintain a high state of alert, the official said.