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/ 11 January 2006
The United Nations mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea, monitoring the disputed border between the two countries, said on Wednesday there has been a ”drastic reduction” in clashes between the two sides over the past two weeks. Border clashes had increased over the past three months.
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/ 11 January 2006
A spider that nested in the ear of a Swedish woman was discovered and removed alive after 27 days, Swedish tabloid Expressen reported on Wednesday. The black spider, ”the size of a thumbnail”, crept into the woman’s ear while she was sleeping and went undiscovered for almost a month, the paper said.
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/ 11 January 2006
New European Union Council president Austria suffered a blow to its hopes of reviving the EU Constitution on Wednesday when Dutch Foreign Minister Bernard Bot declared it ”dead”. After a talk with his visiting Austrian counterpart in The Hague, Bot said: ”We discussed the constitution, which for The Netherlands is dead.”
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/ 11 January 2006
Ariel Sharon’s progress since his massive brain haemorrhage has stunned doctors, but the Israeli premier still faces a long and rocky road to recovery, his chief neurosurgeon said on Wednesday. Sharon, who is being gradually awoken from a medically induced coma, is already moving ”his four limbs”.
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/ 11 January 2006
London- and South Africa-listed financial-services group Old Mutual is likely to unveil a far higher level of acceptances related to its R38-billion takeover offer for Swedish insurer Skandia than the current 64,3% after the tender offer closes at midnight on Thursday.
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/ 11 January 2006
Pro-democracy activists in Swaziland are planning mass action against the kingdom’s leader, King Mswati III, following the December arrest of 14 opposition party members on high-treason charges. Youth organisations will be called on to participate in mass action, which will take place in Swaziland and South Africa.
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/ 11 January 2006
A high-tech scanner that digitally ”strips” travellers on their way to their plane or train will go on trial for four weeks from Thursday at a major London rail station, officials said. Passengers at Paddington Station in West London will be invited to pass through the scanner before they board the Heathrow Express non-stop train service to the British capital’s main airport.
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/ 11 January 2006
South Africa’s opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) has requested in a letter that President Thabo Mbeki take action over what it described as ”the possible abuse of state resources” by Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka. It is estimated that a holiday — described by DA MP Gareth Morgan as ”a gravy plane holiday” — to the United Arab Emirates in December cost about  000.
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/ 11 January 2006
Gold was higher in choppy and highly liquid trade on Wednesday afternoon amid a firmer euro. At 2.46pm, gold was quoted at $544,20 a troy ounce, up $1/oz from its previous close. "It has been quite a choppy and volatile day. We’ve seen extremely high levels of liquidity," a Johannesburg-based trader said.
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/ 11 January 2006
Budapest firefighters had to remove a window and a large section of wall, and use a forklift to extract a grossly overweight woman from her home, MTI news agency reported. Firefighters spent five hours dismantling the home of the middle-aged woman, who weighs in at between 200kg and 300kg.