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/ 25 January 2006

Gazans vote for change

Armed police patrolled rooftops of polling centres on Wednesday as activists waving the green flags of Islamist party Hamas and the yellow banners of rival Fatah mingled with Palestinian voters in the impoverished Gaza Strip. "We want things to improve," said the elderly Abu Mohammed, leaning on a wooden cane. "I support Hamas. Why would I vote for Fatah?"

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/ 25 January 2006

Khodorkovsky put in solitary confinement

First he lost his oil empire, then most of his money, then his freedom. Now prison officials have taken away Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s right to human company by putting him in solitary confinement. Khodorkovsky, once Russia’s richest man, has been moved to solitary confinement at the Siberian penal colony where he is serving nine years for fraud after breaking prison rules for a second time.

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/ 25 January 2006

Kiefer and Mauresmo into Australian Open semis

A pumped-up Nicolas Kiefer and an ice-cool Amelie Mauresmo drove vastly different roads to park themselves in the Australian Open semifinals on Wednesday. Kiefer was on court for four hours and 48 minutes against Frenchman Sebastien Grosjean, while Mauersmo was back in the dressing room in less than an hour against Switzerland’s Patty Schnyder.

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/ 25 January 2006

Shout if you’re against corruption!

More than 60 Indonesians screamed anti-graft slogans at the top of their lungs in a contest aimed at encouraging the public to speak out against rampant corruption. The loudest yell clocked in at 113,2 decibels — roughly as loud as a chainsaw — and the screamer snared two million rupiah ($200) in prize money.

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/ 25 January 2006

Surge in support for Hamas

The armed Islamist group Hamas is expected to break the ruling Fatah movement’s 40-year domination of the Palestinian cause in bitterly contested parliamentary elections on Wednesday. Fatah is likely to lose its outright majority in Parliament as Hamas emerges as a potential partner in a power-sharing government.

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/ 25 January 2006

Backlash as Google shores up great firewall of China

Google, the world’s biggest search engine, will team up with the world’s biggest censor, China, on Wednesday with a service that it hopes will make it more attractive to the country’s 110-million online users. Google will effectively become another brick in the great firewall of China when it starts filtering out information that it believes the government will not approve of.