Staff Reporter
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/ 26 October 2006

Buses hijacked in W Cape taxi protest

A bus was burned and two were hijacked during a violent protest by taxi drivers in Cape Town on Thursday morning, the Golden Arrow bus company said. One of the hijacked buses was used to block off the N2 highway. Bus passengers and drivers were injured by shattered glass due to numerous stonings, the company said.

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/ 26 October 2006

Wallabies plan backline experiments

The Wallabies are set for some revolutionary positional changes on next month’s four-Test European tour as they look ahead to next year’s Rugby World Cup in France. Coach John Connolly is tinkering with a revamp of the backline to maximise Australia’s chances of challenging World Cup favourites New Zealand and France.

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/ 26 October 2006

CIA tried to silence EU on torture flights

The CIA tried to persuade Germany to silence European Union protests about the human rights record of one of the United States’s key allies in its clandestine torture flights programme, the Guardian can reveal. According to a secret intelligence report, the CIA offered to let Germany have access to one of its citizens, an al-Qaeda suspect being held in a Moroccan cell.

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/ 26 October 2006

Radio host apologises to Michael J Fox

Parkinson’s disease has become the latest battleground in the American midterm elections, with the rightwing talk radio host Rush Limbaugh locked in an unseemly wrangle with the actor and Parkinson’s sufferer Michael J Fox. Limbaugh was forced to apologise to the actor after he accused Fox of exaggerating the symptoms of his illness in an election television advert

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/ 26 October 2006

Starbucks, the coffee beans and the copyright row

Starbucks, the giant United States coffee chain, has used its muscle to block an attempt by Ethiopia’s farmers to copyright their most famous coffee bean types, denying them potential earnings of up to -million a year, said Oxfam. The development agency said the Ethiopian government last year filed copyright applications to trademark its most famous coffee names.

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/ 26 October 2006

Mine rescue operation slowed by ‘difficult’ rock

Rescue workers in search of the three miners still trapped underground in AngloGold Ashanti’s Tautona mine have been delayed by ”a difficult rock”, the company said on Thursday morning. ”There was slow progress during the course of the night because the rock that rescuers have to go through to reach the trapped miners is difficult [to dig past],” spokesperson Steve Lenahan said.

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/ 26 October 2006

Dlamini-Zuma calls for Security Council reform

South Africa will enhance peacekeeping and conflict resolution in Africa while serving on the United Nations Security Council, Minister of Foreign Affairs Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma said on Wednesday. She said at the London School of Economics that the government’s vision for a prosperous, peaceful, democratic, non-racial, non-sexist and united Africa would influence its work on the council.