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/ 17 November 2007
Japan’s whaling fleet is set to depart on Sunday for an annual hunt that this year for the first time will take humpback whales — a perennial favourite among whale-watchers — sparking protests from activists. Japan abandoned commercial whaling in accordance with an international moratorium in 1986, but began the next year to conduct what it calls scientific research whaling.
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/ 17 November 2007
Sudan added to the international row over Zoe’s Ark on Friday, accusing Paris of having furnished visas to the French charity to fly 103 children out of Chad, before the Chadian authorities intervened. Sudan’s humanitarian aid commissioner Mohamed Abdel Rahman Hassabo also accused the United Nations agencies working in the region
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/ 17 November 2007
A United Nations climate conference agreed on Friday a blueprint for fighting global warming and said governments have only a few years to avert some of the worst impacts. Delegates at the 130-nation talks stood and applauded after chairperson Rajendra Pachauri brought down the gavel on the November 12 to 17 meeting in Valencia, Spain, that wraps up six years of work.
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/ 17 November 2007
Africa’s insistence that Robert Mugabe be invited to a summit in Europe is a matter of principle and not a sign of support for the Zimbabwean leader or his government, the chairperson of the African Union (AU) said on Friday. The prospect that Mugabe could attend a European Union-AU summit in Lisbon next month has threatened to derail the meeting.
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/ 17 November 2007
Print Media South Africa (PMSA) is seeking an urgent meeting with Minister in the Presidency Essop Pahad after he threatened to withdraw government advertising from the Sunday Times. PMSA said it sought a meeting with the minister after he expressed his view that the government should pull its advertising from the weekly.
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/ 17 November 2007
A powerful cyclone ripped through Bangladesh on Friday leaving a trail of destruction that claimed an estimated 1Â 000 lives and caused hundreds of thousands to flee the strong winds and driving rain. Cyclone Sidr crashed into the south-western coast after racing up the Bay of Bengal at 240km/h and triggered a 5m-high tidal wave.
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/ 17 November 2007
There was an urgent need for greater co-operation between Africa and its compatriots in foreign countries, President Thabo Mbeki said on Friday. ”This is particularly so with all of us on the continent so that we respond successfully to such challenges as the attainment of peace and stability,” he told the opening of the African Diaspora Ministerial Conference in Midrand.
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/ 17 November 2007
United States envoy John Negroponte spoke to Pakistan’s opposition leader Benazir Bhutto on Friday and said moderate forces should work together to put the country back on a democratic path.
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/ 17 November 2007
In the first big-screen casualty of the Hollywood writers strike, Columbia Pictures said on Friday it had postponed production on Angels & Demons, a prequel to its box-office hit The Da Vinci Code starring Tom Hanks. The Sony-owned film distributor said the planned release date for the thriller has been pushed back to 2009.
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/ 17 November 2007
Africa requires massive investment in its failing energy sector to boost economic growth and meet its goal of halving poverty, a United States-Africa business summit heard on Friday. Emerging economies required a 16% increase in energy to drive every 10% of gross domestic product (GDP) growth, said Andrew Fawthrop, Chevron energy company’s Nigerian vice-president.