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/ 19 October 2005
New casualty figures from the South Asian earthquake have pushed the death toll to more than 79 000, regional officials said on Wednesday. The new numbers come as two strong aftershocks jolted the devastated region, unleashing landslides and setting off another wave of panic among survivors.
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/ 19 October 2005
Tracing a route through the folds of the eastern Himalayas, Motilall Lakhotia is explaining how Indian trade caravans used to ply the scenic Chumbi valley into Tibet. ”It was a big trade even then. The Tibetans sold us Indians silver, raw wool and Chinese silk. We had manufactured goods and cotton,” says the dapper Lakhotia.
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/ 19 October 2005
The Nile has witnessed more centuries of human eccentricity than any of the world’s great rivers, but what it is now experiencing must rank high in its annals of misery. Hundreds of people laden with bags, bedding and bicycles wait disconsolately on wharves. Under the unremitting sun, anxious passengers crowd the flat decks of rickety barges meant only for cargo.
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/ 18 October 2005
A century-old dam on the rain-swollen Mill River deteriorated overnight and officials in Taunton, Massachusetts, prepared for the worst on Tuesday, evacuating residents, cancelling classes and closing off downtown amid fears of a wall of water up to 1,8m deep.
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/ 18 October 2005
Saddam Hussein’s rights have been ”violated” in the legal process following his capture, one of his top United States lawyers said on Tuesday on the eve of the deposed Iraqi leader’s trial opening on charges of ordering the massacre of 143 countrymen two decades ago.
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/ 18 October 2005
Mangaung mayor Papi Mokoena has been relieved of all leadership positions in the African National Congress in the Free State, the party announced on Tuesday. Free State ANC deputy chairperson Pat Matosa said the decision by the party’s provincial working committee (PWC) was taken in the interests of stabilising local government at all levels.
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/ 18 October 2005
Improved financial management and an increase in tourism revenue has seen the Robben Island Museum move into the black over the past financial year, MPs heard on Tuesday. ”We have, over three years, turned a loss of R8-million [in 2002/03] to a profit of R7,3-million,” museum chief financial officer Nash Masekwameng told Parliament’s arts and culture portfolio committee.
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/ 18 October 2005
Noam Chomsky, the American linguistics expert and United States foreign policy critic, was named the world’s top public intellectual, according to a new British magazine poll released on Tuesday. Best known for his loud and consistent criticism of US foreign policy over the last 40 years, Chomsky (76) decisively beat novelist and academic Umberto Eco to top the poll.
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/ 18 October 2005
Gauteng’s car-free day on Thursday will be voluntary, the City of Johannesburg said. Speaking to the media on Tuesday, the city’s deputy director for transport management, Alfred Sam, said the city would not close any routes for private cars. He conceded that Johannesburg did not have the best transport system in the world, but urged everybody to participate.