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/ 21 December 2005
Bolivia’s future president Evo Morales, a coca producer under pressure to crack down on cocaine, has pledged to keep controls on coca but says he will study expanding the area where it can be legally grown. Morales on Tuesday also called on the United States to work with him to develop better ways of ending drug trafficking.
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/ 21 December 2005
America Online (AOL) has sealed a late deal with Google to deepen their relationship, while leaving Microsoft as the spurned suitor. The software titan’s failure to woo AOL away from Google in favour of its own search technology highlights the uphill battle Microsoft faces in the lucrative business of selling online ads.
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/ 21 December 2005
The Movement for Democratic Change’s Paul Themba Nyathi had his passport confiscated on December 9 this year. He spoke to the <i>Mail & Guardian</i> recently.
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/ 21 December 2005
No sooner had we gotten used to the idea of high-priced "anti-ageing" creams containing the placenta of Tibetan yak than the Botox fad hit and Hollywood has-beens and local socialites alike froze their faces into immobility with artfully placed shots of what is, essentially, muscle paralysing poison.
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/ 21 December 2005
A sleek, official-looking convoy rolls up in front of Beirut’s Maronite patriarchate. No one emerges. Seconds later, a lone, humdrum jeep pops up. And out steps Lebanon’s Prime Minister Fuad Siniora. Such fake convoys are just one of the methods used by Lebanese politicians trying to outwit potential attackers who have reportedly already compiled hit lists of their next targets.
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/ 21 December 2005
The October earthquake that killed more than 70Â 000 people has highlighted the urgent need for Pakistan to monitor seismic activity. Large areas of Pakistan fall within the Himalayan arc, a region prone to movements of the tectonic plates covering the Earth’s surface. Yet the authorities have paid little attention.
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/ 21 December 2005
Nine hours after the tsunami struck the coast of Sri Lanka on December 26 last year, rescue workers found a 10-week-old boy caked in mud and took him to Kalmunai Base hospital. There he was registered as ”Baby 81”, the 81st person admitted on that chaotic day.
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/ 20 December 2005
The use of illegal stimulants such as crack cocaine, cat and tik is on the increase in South Africa, the Medical Research Council announced last week. Of 7Â 655 patients seen at 63 alcohol- and drug-treatment centres in five provinces in the first six months of this year, almost one in three reported having used crack cocaine, cocaine hydrochloride, methamphetamine (tik) and methcathinone (cat).
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/ 20 December 2005
Gunmen briefly occupied the offices of the mayor of Bethlehem on Tuesday in the countdown to Christmas, highlighting the rampant security chaos in the Palestinian territories. About 15 masked members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed offshoot of the ruling Fatah movement, burst into the building.