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/ 5 February 2007
Bafana Bafana players were impressed by their new coach, Brazilian Carlos Parreira, after their first training session at the FNB Stadium in Johannesburg on Monday morning. ”He looks good to me. He is like the person we needed for a long time,” England-based Blackburn Rovers player Aaron Mokoena told reporters after the training session.
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/ 5 February 2007
Nigerian militia leader Mujahid Dokubo-Asari, whose release is demanded by armed groups causing havoc in the oil-producing Niger Delta, should be barred from his own trial because of bad behaviour, prosecutors said on Monday. Asari’s treason trial started a year and a half ago but the court is yet to hear a witness.
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/ 5 February 2007
A letter bomb exploded at a London office on Monday, injuring one woman employee. Police said the area in Victoria Street in Central London was cordoned off after they received reports of a suspicious package. ”A female employee was taken to hospital. There was an explosion and she was taken to hospital as a result,” a Scotland Yard spokesperson told Reuters.
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/ 5 February 2007
Chinese President Hu Jintao brought his eight-nation African tour on Monday to Namibia, a sparsely populated, mineral-rich desert country that hopes to benefit from an influx of Chinese investment and tourists. Chinese and Namibian flags and photos of Hu and Namibian President Hifikepunye Pohamba decorated the main highway from Windhoek’s airport.
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/ 5 February 2007
Mortar bombs killed 15 people in a Sunni neighbourhood in Baghdad on Sunday in fresh violence after a truck bomb killed 135 people in a Shi’ite area in the worst single bombing since the United States-led 2003 invasion. The spiralling sectarian bloodshed threw the spotlight on Shi’ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s planned crackdown in Baghdad.
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/ 5 February 2007
Iraqi and United States forces killed a top official of radical Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s organisation in a raid on his home north of Baghdad on Sunday. An official in al-Sadr’s office, Abdul-Mehdi al-Matiri, called the killing of Khadim al-Maliki in the village of Huweidar near Baquba an ”assassination”.
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/ 5 February 2007
North Korea heads into talks with the region’s main powers this week with signs the impoverished state may be ready to agree to an initial deal over demands it stop building a nuclear arsenal in exchange for aid. But diplomats and analysts say there is no chance the North will agree to completely give up its atomic weaponry at the six-way talks.
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/ 5 February 2007
Zimbabwe’s white commercial farmers expressed relief on Monday after the government made good on its pledge to allow them to harvest their crops before evicting them. President Robert Mugabe’s government had given white farmers, and an unspecified number of black people illegally occupying farms, until February 3 to vacate their land.
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/ 5 February 2007
Pakistan have recalled all-rounder Azhar Mahmood for the remaining four one-day internationals in South Africa after being faced with an injury crisis. Mahmood (31) has not played for Pakistan since February 2005 against Australia in Sydney and he replaces bowler Shabbir Ahmed, who has returned home with a groin injury after playing in just the Twenty20 international match last week.
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/ 5 February 2007
The Johannesburg Metrobus strike will go to the Labour Court, the South African Municipal Workers’ Union (Samwu) said on Monday. Spokesperson Dumisani Langa said Samwu had received papers from the City of Johannesburg on Monday, giving notice of an urgent application to the Labour Court against Metrobus and Samwu.