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/ 4 May 2006

Security Council fails to agree on Iran deadline

The United Nations Security Council met behind closed doors to discuss a draft resolution on Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons programme on Wednesday as Tehran announced it had successfully enriched uranium to a new level. Britain and France, backed by the United States, put forward a draft resolution that would make it mandatory for Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment programme

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/ 4 May 2006

New front line in the war on terror

As hideouts go, the Shawal Valley in northern Pakistan is a militant’s dream. Lonely goat trails wind through a rocky 40km corridor that nudges the Afghan border. Its fiercely conservative tribesmen and forbidding high-walled compounds have sheltered Taliban fighters and probably al-Qaeda fugitives.

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/ 4 May 2006

Huge Pacific earthquake sparks tsunami panic

A massive earthquake with a magnitude of 7,8 rocked the island nation of Tonga on Thursday, triggering a panic evacuation in a New Zealand town after tsunami warnings were briefly issued for the South Pacific. Although the warnings were withdrawn within two hours, hundreds of people in the New Zealand coastal town of Gisborne, more than 2 200km from the quake’s epicentre, fled their homes.

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/ 4 May 2006

In and of South Africa

In our letters pages this week, we record a rather different reaction to Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s complaint about South Africa’s white community — different, that is, from the standard howls of outrage and furious protestations that whites are "good citizens".

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/ 4 May 2006

Muzzling gas guzzlers

The Government is set to kick gas-guzzling cars into touch with widespread reforms aimed at promoting fuel economy and reducing emissions. The new measures are in line with international best practice where fuel economy and emissions labelling on every car is compulsory.

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/ 4 May 2006

From e-rate to irate

Long-awaited legislation to allow schools cheaper access to the Internet has been approved – more than four years after the Department of Education and the Department of Communications introduced the idea in a policy document.