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/ 5 September 2006

Jazz star Moses Khumalo found dead

One of South Africa’s foremost young jazz musicians, saxophonist Moses Khumalo (27), was found dead in his house in Honeydew, west of Johannesburg, on Monday evening, West Rand police said. Khumalo’s girlfriend, who last saw the musician on Friday, went to check on him and found his body hanging in the house, police said.

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/ 5 September 2006

Islamist jailed over Bali bombings

An Indonesian court sentenced an Islamist militant to eight years in prison on Tuesday for aiding the alleged mastermind of the suicide bombings that killed 20 people in Bali last year. Abdul Aziz (30) ”committed gross crimes against humanity”, according to the presiding judge, Gede Wirya.

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/ 5 September 2006

Japan holds its breath ahead of royal birth

Japan is gripped by expectation that the looming crisis over succession to the Chrysanthemum throne could end on Tuesday if the baby to be delivered by caesarean section to Princess Kiko turns out to be a boy. The wife of the second in line to the throne is due to give birth at a private hospital in Tokyo after doctors decided several weeks ago to plan a caesarean after spotting a minor complication.

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/ 5 September 2006

Burundi’s second vice-president resigns

Burundi’s second vice-president resigned on Tuesday, blaming official corruption and human rights abuses for derailing promising progress toward peace in the Central African nation. Alice Nzomukunda told reporters in the capital she could not ”remain indifferent” to troubling developments in the country.

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/ 5 September 2006

Saudi sympathy for al-Qaeda still runs strong

Two jailbreaks and a series of arrests in recent months suggest that sympathy for al-Qaeda militants in Saudi Arabia still runs strong despite a government crackdown, analysts said this week. The authorities in the world’s biggest oil exporter say they have seized nearly 80 al-Qaeda members or sympathisers from around the country over the last three months.

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/ 5 September 2006

Lebanese troops move into Hezbollah bastion

Lebanese troops moved on Tuesday into a town wrecked by Israel’s war with Hezbollah, as United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan said he hoped for word on the lifting of an Israeli blockade on Lebanon within two days. Troops in armoured carriers, trucks and jeeps rolled into the shattered Shi’ite Muslim town of Bint Jbeil that was the scene of some of the fiercest fighting.

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/ 5 September 2006

Castro: Worst of health problems over

Cuban President Fidel Castro, in a handwritten statement published on Tuesday, said the worst part of a health crisis that made him shed 18,5kg is over and he will attend the Non-Aligned Movement summit in Cuba next week. ”You can say the most critical moment is behind me,” Castro said in the statement, published in the official daily, Granma.

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/ 5 September 2006

Diarrhoea outbreak hits Ethiopia

A diarrhoea outbreak in Ethiopia has infected at least 15 000 people and killed 148, the United Nations said on Tuesday. Elisabeth Byrs, spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said that aid workers fear the epidemic, which has been stoked by heavy flooding, could spread even further.