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/ 26 November 2007

China waxes lyrical over moon mission pictures

Chinese leaders hailed images sent back from from the country’s first lunar satellite on Monday, saying they showed their nation had thrust itself into the front ranks of global technological powers. Premier Wen Jiabao, visiting the scientists who have guided the probe Chang’e 1 into space and around the moon, proclaimed the mission a complete success.

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/ 26 November 2007

Quakes kill at least three on Indonesian island

At least three people were killed and 45 injured when powerful earthquakes struck off the coast of Sumbawa island in central Indonesia, a health ministry official said on Monday. Several buildings, including a health clinic, collapsed in the island’s Bima district, said Rustam Pakaya, the head of the health ministry’s crisis centre.

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/ 26 November 2007

Mission for James Bond’s Q: Seek venture capital

In the James Bond novels and films, it fell to technical expert Q to invent the gizmos and cunningly concealed weapons that helped the British spy cheat death and save the world. From a biometric keyboard to blast-proof curtains, the inventions on display in the real world this month came from five technology firms in the final round of the Global Security Challenge.

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/ 26 November 2007

Desert art in danger at Egypt’s new tourism frontier

A rising tide of travellers seeking out the new frontier of Egyptian tourism is threatening priceless rock art preserved for millennia in one of the most-isolated reaches of the Sahara. In Egypt’s south-west corner, straddling the borders of Sudan and Libya, the elegant paintings of prehistoric man and beast in the mountains of Gilf Kabir and Jebel Ouenat are as stunning in their simplicity as anything by Picasso.

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/ 26 November 2007

Racism or an inelegant solution?

Boardroom politics and reshuffling happen all the time, usually because of personal differences or conflicting strategic visions. In the past two years there have been numerous chief executives who have resigned for "personal reasons" or "to spend more time with the family". These reasons are often used as euphemisms by executives who no longer see eye to eye with the rest of the board.

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/ 26 November 2007

Pneumonia vaccine too expensive

One in five of the tens of thousands of young children who die each year in South Africa probably suffocate to death, drowning from pus-filled lungs as a result of pneumonia. Yet more than two-thirds of these deaths could be prevented if all children under five were given a vaccine that protects against the most common bacterial cause of pneumonia — the pneumococcus.