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/ 1 September 2006
In Hollywood movies, a single plot twist is no longer considered sufficient: the first surprise is the down payment on a more amazing revelation. Off-screen events now follow the same logic: Mel Gibson’s drunk, anti-Semitic rant simply began the widening of eyes that now gape fully with the news that Viacom-Paramount is abandoning its production […]
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/ 1 September 2006
Zachary Guiles knew he was being provocative when he showed up for school two years ago in a T-shirt that accused George Bush of being a war-mongering draft-dodger, a drunkard and a drug addict. What the 13-year-old may not have realised was that he would provoke a major free-speech battle that culminated this week in a court victory.
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/ 1 September 2006
Only governments can effectively deliver services like health and education to the poorest, development group Oxfam said in a report on Friday critical of groups like the World Bank for hindering poverty programmes by pushing private-sector solutions.
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/ 1 September 2006
Hope and despair coexist in the rubble of Bint Jbeil, the southern Lebanese town that saw some of the fiercest fighting of the war between Israel and the Hezbollah Shiite militia. ”Of course it will rebuild, sooner or later,” says Ali Hassan Bazzi (45) who stopped by the damaged shop of his friend Mohammed Bazzi (32).
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/ 1 September 2006
All students at the Soshanguve campus of the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) have to leave the campus by 10am on Friday, university management said. TUT spokesperson Willa de Ruyter said: ”The decision of the executive management committee follows a week of violent student protest at the campus and students ignoring an ultimatum to return to class.”
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/ 1 September 2006
Two Edvard Munch masterpieces stolen in one of the world’s most audacious art thefts two years ago have been recovered, police said on Thursday. A version of the Norwegian artist’s most famous painting, The Scream, and his Madonna are in the hands of the authorities apparently in good condition after speculation that they had been irreparably damaged.
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/ 1 September 2006
Trainee police officers shot dead as many as three university students in Côte d’Ivoire on Thursday in a row that began after one of the trainees jumped the queue at a bus stop, student witnesses said. Serges Koffi, leader of Ivorian student union Fesci, said some students had beaten up the trainee officer after he refused to wait in line for a bus on Monday.
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/ 1 September 2006
Libyan leader Moammar Gadaffi, marked the 37th anniversary of the coup d’état that brought him to power on Thursday by urging his supporters to ”kill enemies” if they asked for political change. The hard-line comment, made in a speech on state television, runs counter to recent hopes of political reform in the North African country of five million.
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/ 1 September 2006
Uganda’s government prepared to deliver to a -million recovery plan to leaders of the war-ravaged north on Friday as peace talks raised hopes of an end to one of Africa’s longest insurgencies. About 1,7-million northerners are living in squalid camps having fled from two-decades of conflict between the military and cult-like rebels from the Lord’s Resistance Army.
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/ 1 September 2006
Alongside the adverts for the latest French supermarket, Japanese plasma TVs, and a Roger Waters gig, the billboards of Warsaw are currently selling a new country. A man gazes at a rippling field of wheat while looking after a child; a young woman admires a fine old block of flats; a teenager contemplates a seascape.