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/ 4 February 2008

Elephants trample Guinea into dust

Côte d’Ivoire overwhelmed Guinea in the closing stages to triumph 5-0 in an Africa Cup of Nations Cup quarterfinal on Sunday and equal the record winning margin for the tournament. Next up for Côte d’Ivoire are either defending champions Egypt or dark horses Angola in the semifinals on Thursday.

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/ 4 February 2008

As evacuees flee, Paris puts role in Chad in play

Resolutions at the United Nations or African Union could alter the mission of French troops in Chad, France’s Foreign Minister said on Monday as a first planeload of evacuees landed at a Paris airport. Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and Defence Minister Herve Morin said French forces secured Chad’s airbases and were protecting French and foreign civilians.

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/ 4 February 2008

Google cries foul over Microsoft’s Yahoo! bid

Microsoft’s ,6-billion bid for Yahoo! raises ”troubling questions” about the future of the internet, Google has warned. A takeover would also create a business with an ”overwhelming share” of online communications services of web-based email and instant messaging, wrote David Drummond, Google’s chief legal officer.

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/ 4 February 2008

Kikuyu flee Rift Valley as homes are burned

Councillor Joseph Chelelgo said no one should call it ethnic cleansing just because his town’s Kikuyu population had been burned out of their homes. For a start, he claimed, houses were razed only after hundreds of Kikuyu left Mogotio, in the heart of Kenya’s strife-torn Rift Valley, for reasons he could not fathom.

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/ 4 February 2008

Clinton lead dwindles ahead of Super Tuesday

Hillary Clinton tried on Sunday to bring Barack Obama’s aspirational candidacy back to earth, repeatedly accusing him of misleading voters in an attempt to halt his poll momentum ahead of the Super Tuesday contest. With opinion polls showing Obama making significant gains, Clinton tried to undermine Obama’s central appeal of being a politician who operated above the fray.

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/ 4 February 2008

Argentina sees comeback of tango

Tango impresario Juan Fabbri can’t get a table at the 500-seat dinner theatre he runs. That’s because Esquina Carlos Gardel in Buenos Aires is packed with tourists every night. Fabbri’s clients pay to each to slice into steaks while watching a movie about the 19th century roots of tango, Argentina’s signature melancholy music and dance.

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/ 4 February 2008

Weak US dollar lures Canadian retirees

Canadian retiree Penny Macdonald and husband Stu have spent winters in the United States for 25 years, but never before have vacations been such good value for ”snowbirds” flocking to trailer parks across America’s sunbelt. Macdonald takes note of how a weak US dollar has made life richer for the thousands of Canadians who routinely spend winters in America.

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/ 4 February 2008

Don’t call me stupid

There are few things more painful than a proud parent talking about an overachieving child. You can’t shut them up. They go on and on about recent adventures in sentence construction and, later, maths Olympiads and, later, university scholarships. I know one such parent in the quaint seaside hamlet they call Durban, writes Lev David.

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/ 4 February 2008

Mugabe’s election ruse

His foes have called it ”an act of madness”, but Robert Mugabe’s move to call elections within two months might prove a masterstroke that will trip up his opponents. But it could also be a move that prolongs his stand-off with the opposition and a regional mediation process with which Mugabe looks increasingly impatient.