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/ 26 December 2007
Few diseases inspire as much panic as an outbreak of Ebola fever. In Uganda — where 100 000 people die of malaria each year — an epidemic of a new Ebola strain has killed just 36 people and infected 135 others, but is causing widespread terror. However, experts say much of the panic is overblown.
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/ 26 December 2007
A giant kite designed to help slash the spiralling cost of fuel consumption could herald the winds of change for commercial cargo shipping. The first freighter to be fitted with the hi-tech sail was launched in the north German port of Hamburg in December by Eva Luise Koehler, wife of German President Horst Koehler.
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/ 26 December 2007
Israel and the Palestinians head into 2008 pledging to seal an ever-elusive peace deal by the end of the year, but with their revived negotiations off to a rocky start. The talks held since the two sides relaunched the Middle East peace process after a nearly seven-year hiatus have been overshadowed by expansion of Israeli settlements.
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/ 26 December 2007
When the history of climate change is written, 2007 will deserve a chapter all to itself. In just 12 months, global warming has been elevated to the great challenge of our time, a cause for public and celebrities alike, a Nobel-winning issue and a headache for politicians of every rank.
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/ 26 December 2007
It was the kind of breakthrough scientists had dreamed of for decades and its promise to help cure disease appears to be fast on the way to being realised. Researchers in November announced they were able to turn the clock back on skin cells and transform them into stem cells, the mutable building blocks of organs and tissues.
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/ 26 December 2007
Malaysia’s drive to woo investment is losing traction, as efforts to get rid of red tape and inept bureaucrats falter, threatening to put it further behind neighbouring Singapore. A year after the authorities vowed to speed up the business approval process, businessmen are still battling unwieldy procedures and inert government staff.
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/ 25 December 2007
Had I been two shades lighter, I would have turned red with embarrassment when strangers inquired if I was ”Ronnie Pillay’s daughter. You’re that reporter at the Natal Witness newspaper. How was your scholarship to America?” they asked. It was the late 1990s and my father had been telling his friends about his eldest daughter’s exploits.
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/ 25 December 2007
Rescue workers pulled three more bodies from the rubble of a collapsed block of flats in the Egyptian city of Alexandria overnight, bringing the toll to eight dead with many still missing, a security source said on Tuesday. Emergency services continued their search following Monday’s collapse of the 12-storey building.
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/ 25 December 2007
A Malaysian referee took out his gun and fired warning shots in the air after a local soccer match turned unruly following the suspension of a player, a newspaper said on Tuesday. The referee, who was also a policeman, ran to his patrol car to get his gun after players mobbed him for showing the red-card to one of them.
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/ 25 December 2007
Gunmen shot dead four members of a French family on Monday, including at least two children, and badly wounded the father in south-west Mauritania, the French embassy in Nouakchott said. The attack happened at Aleg, 250km east of the capital, a security source said, adding that the gunmen were unidentified.