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/ 20 November 2007
The hearing of germ-warfare expert Wouter Basson has been postponed until September next year, after prosecutors on Tuesday said they were embarrassed by the testimony of their own expert witness. Basson on Monday pleaded not guilty to six charges brought against him at the Health Professions Council of South Africa.
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/ 20 November 2007
Egyptian bloggers, long at the forefront of exposing rights abuses, are planning an online festival of torture videos to run alongside the 31st Cairo Film Festival, local media reported on Tuesday. The parallel festival is the brainchild of a blogger named Walid, the Egyptian Mail reported.
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/ 20 November 2007
United States banking titan Citigroup may have to write off -billion in soured investments including mortgage losses in coming months, a report by Goldman Sachs predicted on Monday. Citigroup, the US’s second-largest bank by market worth, is already reeling from its exposure to the US housing downturn and tighter credit markets.
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/ 20 November 2007
Amazon.com is hoping to invigorate a nascent market for electronic books by introducing its own e-book reader with free wireless connectivity. Monday’s long-anticipated announcement comes as e-books remain a sliver of overall book sales, partly because they lack the comfort and intimacy of bound paper.
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/ 20 November 2007
California on Monday launched a lawsuit against 20 companies, accusing them of manufacturing or selling toys with illegal quantities of lead, a statement said. California attorney general Jerry Brown said the firms — including Mattel and Toys ”R” Us — are being sued for knowingly exposing children to potentially dangerous lead levels.
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/ 20 November 2007
A commander and several fighters from Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) have deserted the movement to escape a treason probe for allegedly collaborating with the government, a spokesperson said on Monday. The group fled in October from the LRA’s hideout along the Sudan-Democratic Republic of Congo border.
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/ 20 November 2007
Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa has granted amnesty to almost 400 convicts in a bid to decongest his country’s disease-infested prisons, an official announced on Tuesday. Mwanawasa amnestied 14 prisoners who were on life sentences and 379 others who were serving various jail terms, a prisons official, Daniel Chiwela, said.
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/ 20 November 2007
A 5,1-magnitude earthquake jolted Iran’s oil-rich south-west on Tuesday and caused minor damage to buildings, the official Irna news agency said. The quake occurred at 5.20am GMT near the town of Ghaleh-tal in an eastern part of Khuzestan province. About 20 children were hurt as they tried to run out of a school building.
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/ 20 November 2007
Pakistan has freed 3 400 people detained under a state of emergency imposed by President Pervez Musharraf and will soon release the remaining 2 000, the Interior Ministry said on Tuesday. That would leave ”very few” detainees facing criminal charges, a ministry spokesperson said.
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/ 20 November 2007
South Africa and Angola have agreed to sign a declaration that will see ordinary passport holders no longer needing visas to travel between the two countries, government news agency BuaNews reported on Tuesday. It said that the declaration of intent would be signed on Wednesday.