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/ 6 December 2007
Nasa postponed the launch, scheduled for Thursday, of the United States space shuttle Atlantis after discovering a problem with a sensor in the spacecraft’s fuel tank, officials said. The US space agency planned to try again on Friday to launch Europe’s long-delayed Columbus science laboratory to the International Space Station.
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/ 6 December 2007
Charred bodies and burnt-out trucks still lie on the blackened grass in a valley in eastern Chad two days after the fighting moved further north. Columns of smoke rise up and drift across the smouldering plains beneath Tourka Mountain, a rocky outcrop near the border with Sudan’s Darfur region.
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/ 6 December 2007
Blackburn manager Mark Hughes has hit back at suggestions that the Premiership club played a part in Benni McCarthy’s surprise omission from South Africa’s squad for next month’s African Cup of Nations. McCarthy (30) had looked set to be a certainty in Carlos Alberto Parreira’s plans for the tournament, which starts in Ghana on January 20.
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/ 6 December 2007
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Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi will not accept a nomination to the national executive committee (NEC) of the African National Congress (ANC), Cosatu said on Thursday. Cosatu spokesperson Patrick Craven said the congress was seriously concerned about leaders who embraced ”patronage”.
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/ 6 December 2007
Government ministers have changed their minds about referring the forensic report on the affairs of the Land Bank to the police. According to Cabinet spokesperson Themba Maseko, they did so after hearing that a number of board members and senior executives of the bank had challenged statements in the report.
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/ 6 December 2007
The South African Police Service (SAPS) was not involved in reviewing the arrest warrant for its National Commissioner, Jackie Selebi, Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula said on Thursday. However, he confirmed that the warrant was indeed the subject of review.
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/ 6 December 2007
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso on Thursday defended inviting Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe to attend a European Union-Africa summit this weekend and vowed to make human rights the first point on the agenda. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is boycotting the Lisbon summit.
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/ 6 December 2007
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The African National Congress (ANC) group that applied unsuccessfully to the Johannesburg High Court to have the party’s imminent conference postponed would appeal the decision, their lawyer said on Thursday. ”We are definitely going to appeal,” said Votani Majola.
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/ 6 December 2007
Four 13th-century copies of the Magna Carta, considered to be one of the most important documents in the history of democracy, go on public display next week for the first time in nearly 800 years. The four, three of which date from 1217 and one from 1225, are held by Oxford University’s Bodleian Library.
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/ 6 December 2007
The so-called ”boot killer”, Daniel van der Walt, was sentenced on Thursday to 17 years’ imprisonment for brutally beating and strangling a frail young prospective employee. Van der Walt, a powerfully built blockman who used to work at a butchery, admitted that he had in February last year murdered petite Marlene Mauer (20).