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/ 23 December 2005
There are layers of secrets to South African history that no one seems to want to dig up any more. Take for instance, the hi-tech murder of the president of Mozambique, who died in a deliberately created plane crash. In case you think airplane crashes don’t mean much, look at what happened in Rwanda after one little plane mysteriously crashed.
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/ 23 December 2005
At some point in the past 10 years or so — opinions differ as to exactly when it was — people working in the toy industry began to notice something troubling. Toy marketers, perhaps to counterbalance the idea that they spend their days playing, pride themselves on their keen business sense.
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/ 23 December 2005
Manoj Namburu ran a technology consulting firm in the United States before he moved to India’s hi-tech capital three years ago to build luxury houses for wealthy software executives. The villas located on the edge of the sprawling city of six million were an immediate hit with software engineers who were willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy peace in Bangalore.
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/ 23 December 2005
A Christmas Island frigate bird named Lydia recently completed a 26-day journey over 4Â 000km in search of food for her baby chick. The trip, tracked with a global positioning device by officials at Christmas Island National Park, is by far the longest known non-stop journey by this critically endangered sea bird.
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/ 23 December 2005
Carp, the traditional Christmas meal in Central Europe, is facing fierce competition this year from newcomers such as salmon and poultry, according to worried Czech producers. Already facing pressure from poultry, carp prices have fallen by about 5% since last year, according to estimates from the biggest national carp producer.
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/ 23 December 2005
Few will actually admit to seeing a ghost themselves, but everyone has heard about them on the once-idyllic Thai island of Phi Phi, still rebuilding after the tsunami killed 700 people. Many Thais say they believe the souls of the nearly 5Â 400 people who were killed in the tsunami continued to haunt the Andaman coast long after the debris had been cleared away and reconstruction began.
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/ 23 December 2005
As the first dizzy flush of post-1994 rainbow nationism wears off in South Africa, ethnic minorities like the Chinese and the Portuguese are reaching deeper into their cultures for their identity. Lessons for the children of minorities, where they are taught their own traditions in their own languages, are burgeoning.
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/ 23 December 2005
The Palestinian Authority will postpone parliamentary elections if Israel bars Palestinian residents of Jerusalem from participating. Israeli officials said they would not allow voting in East Jerusalem as part of the elections scheduled for January 25 if the Palestinian Islamic militant group Hamas was involved.
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/ 23 December 2005
For about half the adult population of Turkey, smoking is an absolutely normal activity, the result being a permanent national health disaster with anti-smoking campaigns making barely a dent in the habit. Now, about 100 lawmakers have submitted an anti-smoking Bill to Parliament that will ban the habit in coffee houses, shopping centres and taxis.
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/ 23 December 2005
Hundreds of young men decked with tinsel wander before mostly Muslim Senegal’s mosques, hawking plastic Christmas trees. Women pray to Allah beneath an inflatable Santa Claus suspended under a bakery’s eaves. While Muslims recognise Jesus Christ as a prophet, they don’t generally celebrate the date of his birth.