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/ 11 September 2007
Chinese officials straining to stifle protest ahead of a key Communist Party congress have been paying to have troublesome petitioners held in violent squalor in a secretive Beijing prison, many complainants said. Eight petitioners told Reuters of being held in the prison with dozens of others who had come to the capital to press grievances.
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/ 11 September 2007
Anita Roddick, founder of beauty retailer the Body Shop and one of Britain’s best known businesswomen, has died at the age of 64 after suffering a major brain haemorrhage, her family said on Monday. The daughter of Italian immigrants, Roddick saw her business mushroom into an empire of more than 2 000 stores serving more than 77-million customers.
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/ 11 September 2007
For a moment on Sunday, rescuers in Nevada searching for the aviator Steve Fossett thought they might have found what they were looking for. Reporters were summoned to Minden-Tahoe airport and a helicopter was scrambled to check out a possible sighting of the wreckage of a single-engine aircraft.
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/ 11 September 2007
Sections of Chris Hani-Baragwanath Hospital in Johannesburg have been without water for nearly a week, media reports said on Tuesday. This has resulted in theatres being closed, several toilets out of order and, according to one specialist surgeon, the hygiene of patients being compromised.
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/ 11 September 2007
I meet the spook at coffee shops on the post-industrial fringes of town, past the tile warehouse, table at the back. The spin doctor prefers a fashionable bar where art-school luvvies with constructivist haircuts serve espresso kissed with golden foam. We take a high-visibility table and I listen as he tells me the truth with a slant, writes Nic Dawes.
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/ 11 September 2007
I wouldn’t blame anyone who accused me of sour grapes if they heard that I am happy I couldn’t go on the Axe jet, despite accepting the invitation. But, think what you will, the Axe jet’s so-called fantasy is an affront to reasonable men. In its unapologetic objectification of women’s bodies, the maker of Axe says men are so easy to please, writes Fikile-Ntsikelelo Moya.
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/ 11 September 2007
Among the many charges that will forever stick to the apartheid government is that its repression of oppositional voices robbed the country of some of its richest intellectual and political resources. The British government has been one of the fortunate beneficiaries of South African-born talent: one of those forced to leave the country in the 1960s was Peter Hain.
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/ 11 September 2007
When the haggard and broken figure was laid out on the slab and displayed to the world it was not just Che Guevara who had died. The dream of socialist revolution in South America was over. His image and name would continue to inspire millions but on the continent he wanted to transform he was a political failure, a defeated guerrilla on the wrong side of history.
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/ 11 September 2007
Jeroen van der Veer (60), the head of Shell, earned £2,9million last year, the average for FTSE-100 firms and almost a quarter of what was paid to his former business rival, Lord Browne at BP. The relatively modest salary suits the slightly downbeat Dutchman, who is a mile away in style from the garrulous and glitzy Browne.
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/ 11 September 2007
Climate change and an increasing population could trigger a global food crisis in the next half century as countries struggle for fertile land to grow crops and rear animals, scientists warned recently. To keep up with the growth in human population, more food will have to be produced worldwide over the next 50 years than has been during the past 10 000 years combined, the experts said.