Staff Reporter
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/ 11 November 2007

Morocco boosts security budget sharply

Draft Moroccan legislation has earmarked nearly 30% of the state’s 2008 budget for security, underscoring anti-terrorism concerns after spring suicide attacks, a government source said on Saturday. The state is expected to pour about 45-billion dirhams (,8-billion) into security, a 29% boost from 2007.

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/ 11 November 2007

Nasa told to solve ‘UFO crash’ X-file

For four decades, residents of the tiny Pennsylvania town of Kecksburg have told their story of strange blue lights in the sky one winter’s evening and a fireball crashing into woods. In 1965, they say, they saw armed soldiers cordoning off the area and a large, metallic, acorn-shaped object driven off at speed on the back of a lorry.

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/ 11 November 2007

Frozen vault saves crops for mankind

Engineers last week finished work on one of the world’s most ambitious conservation projects: a doomsday vault carved into a frozen mountainside in the archipelago of Svalbard, a few hundred kilometres from the North Pole. Over the next few weeks, the huge cavern will be filled with more than a million types of seed.

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/ 11 November 2007

Southern preacher could be saviour of Republicans

He is a former governor of Arkansas from a town called Hope. He has a nice line in campaign humour and speaks like a Deep South preacher. He is also running for president. But this is not Bill Clinton of 1992. This is Mike Huckabee, a long-shot Republican contender for the 2008 White House who has burst into the leading pack of the race.

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/ 11 November 2007

High-rise vision sparks Paris revolt

A dizzying controversy will grip the French capital this week as its mayor tries to convince recalcitrant Parisians of the beauty of high-rise buildings. Two years after riots swept through the tower blocks of the Paris suburbs, mayor Bertrand Delanoe will unveil artists’ impressions of skyscrapers planned for three areas within the capital’s ringroad.

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/ 11 November 2007

How football beat apartheid on Robben Island

Forty years after Robben Island detainees formed the Makana Football Association inside the island fortress, the club was officially recognised by Fifa, the sport’s international governing body. Now the little-known story of how prisoners set up their own league under the noses of the warders is to be told in a feature film.

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/ 11 November 2007

Dolphins seem poised for the kill

With one day left in their SuperSport Series match at Buffalo Park in East London against the Warriors, the Dolphins were poised for the kill at the close of play on Saturday. The sun in Paarl shone slightly more on the Cape Cobras than on the visiting Lions, and in Benoni, the Titans and the Diamond Eagles appeared to be heading for a draw.