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/ 2 November 2006
A state funeral for ex-president PW Botha is an insult to African people, the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) said on Thursday. Botha died on Tuesday, aged 90. ”The offer to give PW Botha a state funeral is naked appeasement to the forces of apartheid. It is … an insult to the intelligence of the African people,” said PAC MP Motsoko Pheko.
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/ 2 November 2006
It is interesting to contrast the two major organisations involved in the running of South African soccer. The Premier Soccer League, under the expert guidance of Trevor Phillips, has become a well-oiled, profitable machine. The South African Football Association, on the other hand, is a shambles of mediocrity, arrogance and indifference.
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/ 2 November 2006
British Prime Minister Tony Blair strutted into the fashion world on Tuesday — then revealed that his attempts to cut a dash in the beachwear range proved a disaster. Blair, normally a man for a sober suit-and-tie combination, lifted the lid on his fashion hell as he attended the opening of the Fashion Retail Academy’s new home in London.
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/ 2 November 2006
A Canadian man marked the 80th anniversary of the death of magician Harry Houdini on Tuesday by escaping from a sealed glass-and-metal box containing two tonnes of wet cement, according to reports. Dean Gunnarson was handcuffed, his body wrapped in chains and his cell locked shut with six padlocks.
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/ 2 November 2006
Hundreds of euro bills in Germany have mysteriously disintegrated in the past several months, apparently due to exposure to sulfuric acid, police and the German central bank said on Thursday. The first case surfaced in June in Berlin when a €20 bill crumbled upon contact.
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/ 2 November 2006
A total of 79 garden gnomes snatched by a so-called gnome-liberation group were discovered on Wednesday along the banks of a stream in France’s central Limousin region, police said. The gnomes were hidden in underbrush with a banner that read "Gnome mistreated, gnome liberated", police said.
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/ 2 November 2006
South Korea’s "fashion police", who prowled the streets in the 1970s measuring the length of women’s skirts, will soon officially be consigned to oblivion. Showing too much skin in public places will no longer be classed as indecent exposure and will be deleted from the Minor Offence Act, the National Police Agency has said.
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/ 2 November 2006
Alarmed by the results of a new study, United Nations experts on climate change are urging the world’s industrialised nations to introduce further cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions. The industrial world’s emissions of greenhouse gases are growing again, they said in a report released this week.
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/ 2 November 2006
Somalia’s weak government and the powerful Islamists on Thursday traded barbs, escalating fears of a full-scale war, a day after peace talks aimed at easing tension in the country collapsed. As threats of war mounted at home, neighbouring Ethiopia warned that the Islamists were ”making conflict inevitable” by refusing to meet the for peace talks.
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/ 2 November 2006
An Algerian newspaper and a press freedom watchdog criticised as heavy handed on Thursday suspended six month prison terms handed to two journalists for allegedly libelling Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi. Ech-Chorouk was sued by Gaddafi for stories suggesting he played a role in negotiations among Tuareg tribal leaders aimed at creating an independent Tuareg state.