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/ 8 February 2006

Vote count under way in Haiti after tense elections

Vote counting began in Haiti on Tuesday, in some areas by candlelight, after elections that were free of the political violence many had feared but were marked by stampedes that left four dead. As the counting was under way in some centres late on Tuesday, voters elsewhere still waited their turn to fill ballots out at the small cardboard voting booths.

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/ 8 February 2006

Uganda’s heart of darkness

One-by-one the words, bizarre and horrific, spout from the mouth of Alice as she recounts the terror and abuse she suffered as a child slave for Uganda’s notorious Lord’s Resistance Army. ”They cut off three [people’s] heads and I was forced to use them as stones to hold the saucepan,” the 17-year-old said, describing her punishment for trying to run away.

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/ 8 February 2006

West Bank rabbi: Peace is possible with Hamas

Menahem Froman is one of the few Israelis to have dared sit down with arch-enemy Hamas. But he’s not just any Israeli. He is a Jewish settler and a rabbi who lives in the West Bank. Last month, fear struck deep in the heart of Israel when the radical Islamist movement won a landslide victory in the Palestinian elections.

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/ 8 February 2006

UN sanctions for three Ivorian politicians

Despite a last-minute snag, a United Nations Security Council panel on Tuesday slapped a 12-month travel ban and asset freeze on three Côte d’Ivoire politicians viewed as obstacles to peace. Targeted by the sanctions were Charles Ble Goude and Eugene Djue, two leaders of the nationalist "Young Patriots" loyal to Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo.

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/ 8 February 2006

Israel unveils plan to encircle Palestinian state

The acting Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, said on Tuesday that he plans to annex the Jordan Valley and major Jewish settlement blocks to Israel in drawing new borders, according to a television station that recorded an interview with him. Channel 2 television said that he made clear he intends to carry through his predecessor’s vision of creating an emasculated Palestinian state on Israel’s terms.