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/ 29 January 2007
The African Union (AU) should allocate 15% or more of its budget to healthcare, Archbishop Desmond Tutu said on Sunday. In a letter written to the AU ahead of its summit to be held this week, Tutu said that over 40-million Africans had died from diseases over the past five years.
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/ 29 January 2007
A crater lake on a New Zealand volcano used as a backdrop in the Lord of the Rings films is on the verge of collapsing and could send a torrent of muddy water down the mountain. Melting snow on Mount Ruapehu has filled the lake to within 1,5m of its lip, according to the New Zealand Herald.
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/ 29 January 2007
Daphney Makhubela had to wait over 20 years to bury her brother Schoeman Ramokgopa, who never said goodbye before leaving South Africa in the 1970s to train as a soldier in the anti-apartheid movement. Ramokgopa was killed in a 1983 battle with apartheid forces on the border with Botswana, where he was stationed as part of an exiled military force.
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/ 29 January 2007
A summit of African Union leaders began in Addis Ababa on Monday, with Sudan receiving a public dressing-down over violence in Darfur. United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was set to add his weight to the mounting pressure on Omar al-Bashir’s regime when he holds showdown talks with the Sudanese president.
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/ 29 January 2007
Tintoretto, the 16th-century Italian painter whose huge masterpieces adorn many of Venice’s churches and palaces, is having his first major solo exhibition for 70 years. The exhibition at Madrid’s El Prado museum comes after curators pledged money to help conserve many of the paintings when they returned to their damp and draughty homes in Venice.
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/ 29 January 2007
The funeral of murdered historian David Rattray, scheduled for Thursday at Michaelhouse school, is being planned to accommodate 1 000 people. Rattray, an Anglo-Zulu War expert and a pioneer of ”raconteur tourism”, was murdered at his home in northern KwaZulu-Natal.
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/ 29 January 2007
Striking Metrobus workers will gather at the company’s Braamfontein offices on Monday — leaving Johannesburg bus commuters to fend for themselves. South African Municipal Workers’ Union secretary Dumisani Langa said about 600 workers would strike after a dispute with the company over sick leave.
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/ 29 January 2007
A report compiled by hundreds of the world’s top climate scientists will paint a bleak picture of climate change and say that evidence of the negative human impact on the environment is ”widespread”, the Independent reported on Monday.
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/ 29 January 2007
Zimbabwe’s main trade union body has given President Robert Mugabe an ultimatum to improve the economic fortunes of workers or face unspecified action. Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions said it had given Harare till February 23 to come up with strategies to reverse Zimbabwe’s economic decline.
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/ 29 January 2007
Japan’s Health Minister did nothing to endear himself to female voters over the weekend when he described women as ”birth-giving machines” and implored them to ”do their best” to halt the country’s declining birthrate. Hakuo Yanagisawa said women of child-bearing age should perform a public service by raising the birthrate.