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/ 26 December 2005

Amazon.com founder’s next big idea

Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos expects a rocket-ship complex for his aerospace venture Blue Origin to open in the south Seattle suburb of Kent early next year, city records show. The records show that an office and warehouse the billionaire is revamping will be used to design and build spacecraft and engines.

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/ 26 December 2005

Why Condoleezza Rice’s star is rising

United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has become the most popular member of the Bush administration and a potential candidate to succeed her boss in the White House, even as Americans lose confidence in the president she serves and patience with the Iraq war she helped launch.

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/ 26 December 2005

Rate your brainpower

Here are the answers to the 101 questions. 1 SABMiller. Laugh It Off’s “Black Labour, White Guilt” T-shirt 2 South African Clothing and Textile Workers’ Union (Sactwu) members, protesting against Cosatu’s distribution of 30 000 T-shirts imported from China 3 11 4 Patricia Arquette 5 Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf 6 Valli Moosa 7 Pope Benedict XVI 8 Joseph […]

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/ 26 December 2005

Fire kills 26 in Chinese bar on Christmas

A Christmas Day fire at an unlicensed bar killed at least 26 people and injured eight in a Chinese city near Hong Kong, the government said on Monday. The fire broke out at 11pm local time on Sunday evening in Zhongshan, which abuts the former Portuguese colony of Macau west of Hong Kong, the official Xinhua news agency said.

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/ 26 December 2005

Tsunami: One year later

The world’s grief and compassion returned to the tsunami-battered coastlines of the Indian Ocean on Monday, marking one year since giant waves crashed ashore in a dozen countries, laying waste to coastal communities and sweeping away at least 216 000 lives.

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/ 26 December 2005

Cape fire slowly being defeated

Firefighters appear to be getting control of the brush fire that has been raging in the Melkbosstrand area north of Cape Town since Saturday, city fire chief Piet Smith said on Sunday evening. The four helicopters that had been water-bombing the blaze were called off at 8pm, but ground crews would stay on the job.

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/ 26 December 2005

SA’s year of political intrigue and scandal

South Africans lost a deputy president in a year marked by political intrigue and scandal, but the post-apartheid nation also added a significant feather to its democratic cap. Jacob Zuma’s fall from grace began with allegations of bribery and corruption stemming from the conviction of his financial adviser and friend Schabir Shaik.

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/ 26 December 2005

Here’s to you, Mrs Robinson

From Moustapha Akkad, the Syrian-born producer of the <i>Halloween</i> movies who was killed in a hotel bomb blast in Jordan, to Zhao Ziyang, the Chinese leader who attempted democratic reforms and was ousted during the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989, we list the notable deaths of 2005.