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/ 7 September 2005
The chairperson of the watchdog standing committee on public accounts (Scopa), Francois Beukman, has resigned, he announced on Wednesday. Beukman formally joined the African National Congress at the start of the defection period for National Assembly members.
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/ 7 September 2005
French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin took the place of the hospitalised Jacques Chirac in the chair at the government’s weekly Cabinet meeting on Wednesday, confirming his strengthening position as the 72-year-old president’s heir apparent. Detail of the president’s condition remained obscure.
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/ 7 September 2005
Turkmenistan’s President-for-life, Saparmurat Niyazov, has ordered a zoo be built for 300 species of birds and animals, including penguins, in the Central Asian republic’s Kara Kum desert, state television announced on Tuesday. A year ago, Niyazov announced construction of an ice palace capable of holding 1 000 people.
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/ 7 September 2005
A senior official of Italy’s national rail operator was summoned to the transport ministry on Tuesday after several incidents in which passengers complained of being infected or bitten by ticks, fleas and lice on trains, some of them serving Paris.
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/ 7 September 2005
She appeared from nowhere on a rain-tossed morning, sitting naked on a Hong Kong shoreline, unable to speak. Now she sits in a hospital bed, staring into space, mute and expressionless, her charts naming her simply as "Unknown". The mysterious appearance of the Western woman has put Hong Kong authorities in a bind.
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/ 7 September 2005
In Buddhist teachings, making money is an unlikely path to nirvana, but in increasingly iconoclastic China it just may well be a leap of faith. Taking a page from their Communist Party brethren, 18 monks in Shanghai have signed up for master of business administration classes in hopes of better managing their temple.
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/ 7 September 2005
Political parties were on Wednesday challenged to field more female candidates as councillors for the upcoming municipal elections by chief electoral officer Pansy Tlakula. ”We had about 60% of all voter registrations this weekend being women,” Tlakula said at a briefing on the outcome of the registration drive.
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/ 7 September 2005
The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, has expressed concern over the death of at least 75 Somali and Ethiopian would-be immigrants who drowned last week as they were being smuggled to Yemen on boats from Somalia. The UNHCR quoted survivors as saying that they were forced to jump into the sea and swim to shore.
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/ 7 September 2005
Angola’s government has given the green light for a chartered plane to bring home more than 700 refugees from Zambia who have been awaiting return for the past three weeks, a UN official said Wednesday. About 724 Angolan refugees were being kept at a makeshift camp in Mongu, about 700km west of the Zambian capital Lusaka, as UN officials awaited clearance from Luanda for the airlift.
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/ 7 September 2005
South Africa’s junior athletes proved that they are ready to take over from their senior counterparts in future when they excelled at the African Junior Championships in Tunis, Tunisia. The South African team returned home on Wednesday with 25 medals and the honour of topping the medals table.