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/ 24 January 2007
South Africa said on Wednesday it had asked the United Nations to delay placing two South Africans on its list of suspects linked to al-Qaeda. Foreign ministry spokesperson Ronnie Mamoepa said the request amounted to an objection by the South African government.
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/ 24 January 2007
Food-aid programmes need to be overhauled to strengthen the long-term campaign against world hunger, the United Nations food agency said on Wednesday. Emergency aid has saved millions of lives, but such help provided over longer periods might destabilise markets, the UN said in a report.
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/ 24 January 2007
Activists outraged by the impending hanging of a 21-year-old Nigerian man for drug trafficking planned a hunger strike in protest against the execution, they said on Wednesday. Chee Siok Chin and lawyer M Ravi, both Singaporeans, said their demonstration will start at 7am on Thursday at the city-state’s Speakers’ Corner.
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/ 24 January 2007
Zimbabwe’s state-run electricity provider is battling a serious financial crunch and a widening supply shortfall which has let to increasing power cuts. The acting chairperson of the Zimbabwe Electicity Supply Authority Christopher Chetsanga said the utility had run up a Z-billion debt which he blamed on low tariffs.
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/ 24 January 2007
A deputy director with the Scorpions at the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) in Pretoria was fined R8Â 000 for driving under the influence of alcohol, media reports said on Wednesday. David Damerell (48) entered into a plea and sentence agreement with the state at the Pietermaritzburg Regional Court on Tuesday.
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/ 24 January 2007
An opportunity to foster stability in Somalia after years of war is ”being squandered”, the deputy chairperson of the African Union said in an interview published in the Financial Times on Wednesday. Patrick Mazimhaka also told the paper that there had not yet been any clear commitment from a non-African country to help fund the mission.
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/ 24 January 2007
Protesters bent on toppling Lebanon’s Cabinet blocked roads with blazing tyres on Tuesday, sparking clashes with government loyalists in which police said three people were killed and 133 people hurt. The violence raised the stakes in a campaign by Iranian- and Syrian-backed Hezbollah and its Shi’ite and Christian allies to oust Prime Minister Fouad Siniora’s Western-supported government.
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/ 24 January 2007
A 26-year-old man was arrested at Cape Town airport on Tuesday evening for saying he had a bomb in a box, police said. ”He had to put a box he was carrying on the X-ray machine and it detected an unusual item,” said national police spokesperson Senior Superintendent Vish Naidoo.
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/ 24 January 2007
A Swedish couple who moved to South Africa watched TV news reports in horror as their personal things were plundered from a ship stranded on the south coast of England. Jan and Anita Bokdal shipped household goods valued at R100 000 from Sweden to Cape Town at the beginning of the year on a container ship.
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/ 24 January 2007
The 12-year-old actor Dakota Fanning has become embroiled in the latest tussle between Hollywood and the religious right over a scene in a new film in which she is seemingly raped by a teenager. Hounddog had its premiere on Monday at the Sundance festival of independent films, founded by Robert Redford and held in Park City, Utah.