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/ 4 December 2007
An armed group demanded that Britain leave Iraq in video footage aired by the Dubai-based al-Arabiya news channel on Tuesday, which showed one of five Britons seized in May. ”I have been here, now held for 173 days, and I feel we have been forgotten,” a man identifying himself as Jason said in the video.
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/ 4 December 2007
Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe on Tuesday expressed his gratitude to European Union and fellow African leaders for enabling him to see off a bid to have him excluded from an EU-Africa summit. ”The sinister campaign led by Britain to isolate us, including the recent attempts to bar us from attending the EU-Africa summit … continues to disintegrate,” Mugabe said in a State of the Nation address in Parliament.
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/ 4 December 2007
Norwegian researchers have discovered a second rare fossil in the Arctic of a pliosaur, a giant reptile described by experts as the ”T rex of the oceans”, the project leader said on Tuesday. ”We think it is a species unknown until now,” said Joern Hurum, of Oslo University’s palaeontology department.
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/ 4 December 2007
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Jacob Zuma is hounded by corruption allegations and his rape trial often overshadows his status as a hero of the anti-apartheid struggle. Yet the burly Zulu politician has shrugged off obstacles that would have crippled others to emerge as favourite to lead the ruling African National Congress.
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/ 4 December 2007
The first South China tiger cub born in South Africa was shown to the media at the Laohu Valley Reserve in the southern Free State on Tuesday. The cub, not named yet, was born 11 days ago, weighing 1,2kg, and opened his eyes on Monday. The South China tiger is one of the most endangered species in the world.
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/ 4 December 2007
A Greek Orthodox nunnery was turned into a marijuana plantation by two men posing as gardeners for elderly nuns, police said on Tuesday. Acting on a tip-off, officers raided the nunnery in the village of Filiro, near the northern port city of Thessaloniki, and found more than 30 large cannabis plants in the enclosed garden.
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/ 4 December 2007
A delegation of the world’s elder statesmen on Tuesday called for an immediate ceasefire in Sudan’s Darfur and for the international community to urgently honour its pledge to send in a peacekeeping force. ”The future of Darfur, and indeed the whole of Sudan, sits on a knife-edge,” said a report following a fact-finding mission.
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/ 4 December 2007
In a further effort to protect South Africa’s fast-diminishing perlemoen stocks, Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism Marthinus van Schalkwyk has imposed a ban on scuba diving and snorkelling in certain areas along the Cape coast. The envisaged prohibition, subject to a process of public comment, will take effect from February 1 next year.
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/ 4 December 2007
Turmoil struck the Somali government on Tuesday as a fifth minister resigned in a power-sharing dispute a day after being appointed, and the president was urgently flown to a hospital in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi. A security official described President Abdullahi Yusuf (72) as being in a ”serious condition” when he arrived in Nairobi on Tuesday.
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/ 4 December 2007
United States and German navy ships have cornered Somali pirates who seized a Japanese-owned chemical tanker more than a month ago and are demanding a ransom, an official said on Tuesday. The Panama-registered Golden Nori was carrying benzene from Singapore to Israel when it was hijacked on October 28.