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/ 2 September 2007
On Saturday, Libyan leader Moammar Gadaffi celebrated the 38th anniversary of the military coup in which he ousted the British-backed King Idris. The 65-year-old is no longer a pariah. Libya is certainly changing, yet a week here makes clear that change is far more limited than many seem to think.
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/ 2 September 2007
On Wednesday, four former lunar astronauts will be guest stars at a gala Manhattan premiere for a remarkable cinematic celebration of their achievement, In the Shadow of the Moon, by British director David Sington. The film has generated rave reviews in the United States and has triggered widespread national interest.
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/ 2 September 2007
”All the refugees who remained — the old, women, children and the feeble — were killed and burnt.” Eleven years ago, thousands of children and adults were left stranded by the Ulindi River in what is now the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo as troops, hellbent on avenging the Rwandan genocide, closed in. Ruaridh Nicoll returns to a country he left in 1996, to reveal a horrific story of rape and slaughter.
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/ 2 September 2007
Two decades ago, General David Petraeus, the man charged with winning the United States’s second war in Iraq, wrote a thesis for his PhD in international relations at Princeton. Now he is delivering another survey of an unpopular, divisive war. Only this time his audience is not a college tutor: it is the whole world.
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/ 2 September 2007
The key piece of material evidence used by prosecutors to implicate Libya in the Lockerbie bombing has emerged as a probable fake. Nearly two decades after Pan Am flight 103 exploded over Scotland, allegations of political intrigue and shoddy investigative work are being levelled at the British government, the FBI and the Scottish police.
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/ 2 September 2007
It all came to an end under a clear blue Idaho sky, in the harsh gaze of a dozen TV cameras. Senator Larry Craig, who started the week as a revered stalwart of the conservative wing of the Republican party, ended it with his career in ruins as he announced his resignation on Saturday.
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/ 2 September 2007
Businessman Cyril Ramaphosa has joined the African National Congress (ANC) presidential succession race, according to weekend media reports. The ANC’s powerful OR Tambo district in the Eastern Cape has formally stated that it will nominate Ramaphosa for the presidency. Regional secretary Mlamli Siyakholwa said that "we have been lobbying Ramaphosa, I must admit".
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/ 2 September 2007
The South Korean government paid Afghanistan’s Taliban a ransom of more than -million to secure the release of 19 missionaries held hostage since mid-July. The claim by a senior Taliban leader was made on Saturday, but denied by South Korea, after the Taliban vowed to use the funds to buy arms and mount suicide attacks.
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/ 1 September 2007
Writing a column, one quickly realises, is like doing stand-up comedy in a soundproofed box in a theatre with the lights turned off. If someone is out there, they are invisible and inaudible. There is no laughter, no applause. Good jokes die in the silence along with the bad ones. Nobody throws flowers. Nobody throws dead cats.
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/ 1 September 2007
Springbok flanker Hendro Scholtz was one of the heroes in the Cheetahs’ Currie Cup win of 80-33 over the Valke at Vodacom Park on Friday night. Scholtz produced some of the magic that made him South Africa’s first choice number-six flanker in 2003.