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/ 18 December 2007
The Tolkien community was in hysterics on Tuesday. At least that was the verdict on one of the leading Hobbit websites following the announcement in Los Angeles that Peter Jackson, director of the -billion-plus trilogy The Lord of the Rings, had signed up to produce two films based on The Hobbit, expected to go into production in 2009.
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/ 18 December 2007
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Jacob Zuma is the new president of the African National Congress. The announcement was greeted by an outpouring of joy and ecstatic cheering by ANC delegates at the party’s conference in Polokwane shortly before 9pm on Tuesday. Thabo Mbeki received 1 505 votes and Zuma received 2 329.
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/ 18 December 2007
Special edition high-end cognacs are common enough, but until now priced in a — relatively speaking — affordable bracket of anywhere from €3 000 to €33 000 ( 300 to 500) a bottle. Now Hennessy has gone the extra mile — while other companies are turning cognac into scent.
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/ 18 December 2007
A Pakistani express train packed with holiday travellers derailed on Wednesday killing 58 people and injuring more than 120, officials said. The Karachi Express night train was on its way from the southern city to Lahore when most of its carriages came off the rails and rammed into each other.
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/ 18 December 2007
Australia will send a fisheries patrol ship to shadow Japan’s whaling fleet near Antarctica and gather evidence for a possible international court challenge to halt the yearly slaughter. The icebreaker Oceanic Viking would leave for the Southern Ocean in days to follow the Japanese fleet.
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/ 18 December 2007
Microcredit, tiny loans to the world’s poorest, is booming and now benefits more than half a billion people but Africa and Latin America lag behind Asia and unscrupulous lenders are cashing in. The Microcredit Summit Campaign surveyed more than 3 000 microcredit bodies around the world and found they reported reaching 133-million people by the end of 2006.
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/ 18 December 2007
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Sanele ”Shanee” Moroka was a girl trapped in a boy’s body with feet trapped in too tight pumps in the voting queue in Polokwane. She doesn’t believe the ANC should remain a multi-class organisation and is wondering what will happen to her poor calloused palms after having tugged the comrades ”forward towards enlightenment”.
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/ 18 December 2007
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ANC secretary general Kgalema Motlanthe has reiterated that policy would not change under a Zuma-led presidency and fears that the left tripartite alliance partners would force change were unfounded. Motlanthe said spontaneous policy change was not possible given the specific processes the ANC follow in formulating and adopting its policies.
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/ 18 December 2007
Santa Claus says that a woman who sat on his lap was naughty, not nice. According to Santa at the Danbury Fair mall in the Connecticut, he was groped. Sandrama Lamy (33) was charged with sexual assault and breach of the peace after allegedly taking liberties with Santa over the weekend.
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/ 18 December 2007
A suicide bomber killed 14 people when he detonated a vest rigged with explosives in a Shi’ite Muslim village north of Baghdad on Tuesday. Suicide bombers, gunmen and car bombs also killed 14 other people across the country. The violence coincided with a visit by United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.