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/ 9 February 2006
A local British police chief who advised shopkeepers in his area not to ”bother to report” shoplifting crimes involving goods valued at less than £75 (about R800) has been criticised by his superiors, who apologised for his ”mistake”. Outraged local shopkeepers took the matter up with their MP.
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/ 9 February 2006
A South African veterinary institute is to conduct tests on bird samples from Kenya, Malawi and Sudan as part of international efforts to help track the possible spread of bird flu. Africa is on high alert after the H5N1 strain of avian influenza, which can be fatal to humans, was reported in Nigeria on Wednesday.
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/ 9 February 2006
Japan and North Korea ended five days of talks in Beijing on Wednesday unable to make progress on normalising relations, with sharp differences remaining over kidnappings, security and wartime history. Japan insisted throughout the talks that no progress would be made unless the issue of North Korea’s abductions of Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s was addressed.
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/ 9 February 2006
A former navy diver who was rescued after more than three days drifting in the sea off New Zealand has said he feared his hallucinations more than thirst or despair. He was found on Wednesday after two navy divers used local knowledge to track down their friend and former colleague.
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/ 9 February 2006
The head of Lebanese militant movement Hezbollah on Thursday told hundreds of thousands of cheering Shi’ites not to compromise until Denmark apologises for the prophet Muhammad cartoons. Thousands of black-clad men and women, most of them youths, braved driving rain in central Beirut to attend the rally.
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/ 9 February 2006
Tens of thousands of Indonesian survivors of the 2004 Asian tsunami are still living in rotting tents, despite a months-long campaign to rehouse them, because the International Federation of the Red Cross has struggled to secure legally certified timber, it emerged on Wednesday.
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/ 9 February 2006
Trade conditions have deteriorated over the past two months, but business expectations for 2006 remain positive, the South African Chamber of Business said on Thursday. While trade conditions gradually improved up to November 2005, the SA Trade Activity Index had been in negative territory for two consecutive months.
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/ 9 February 2006
A Nasa public affairs officer who worked on George Bush’s re-election campaign and was linked to a campaign to stifle discussion by space agency scientists on global warming, has resigned. George Deutsch (24) was given a job in the Nasa press office last year after working on Bush’s 2004 presidential campaign.
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/ 9 February 2006
A court in Zimbabwe has ordered that the state-run media commission reconsider an application by the banned Daily News to begin printing again, the state-controlled Herald said on Thursday. The newspaper has been off the streets since September 2003, when police closed it down for operating without a licence.
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/ 9 February 2006
The Eastern Africa Submarine Cable System (EASSy) Work Groups have made significant strides in their task of making the 9 900km high-performance fibre optic cable a reality, Sentech CEO Dr Sebiletso Mokone-Matabane said in a statement on Thursday.