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/ 15 September 2005
Frustrated United States Democrats have their last chance on Thursday after two days of sparring to coax answers from chief justice nominee John Roberts on abortion, privacy and other controversial issues before he heads to likely Senate confirmation.
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/ 15 September 2005
Somalia’s breakaway region of Somaliland holds parliamentary polls later this month with the hope the exercise will boost its chance of world recognition as a state independent of a nation in chaos. Somaliland will on September 29 conduct its third multiparty elections since 2000, as the rest of the Horn of Africa nation founders in lawlessness despite the creation of a transitional federal government.
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/ 15 September 2005
The fraud trial of three former senior executives at the Eastern Cape Development Corporation has renewed widely held perceptions in the province that Premier Nosimo Balindlela’s government is attempting to purge individuals loyal to former premier Makhenkesi Stofile and provincial African National Congress deputy chairperson Enoch Godongwana.
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/ 15 September 2005
Vehicle-distribution group McCarthy’s chief executive, Brand Pretorius, says the South African motor industry remains fully committed to the government’s taxi-recapitalisation programme and will do whatever is required to ensure its success. However, there are still some grey areas regarding the vehicle-scrapping policy and procedures.
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/ 15 September 2005
Bob Dylan went ”electric” to angry shouts; the Rolling Stones watched Hells Angels stab a man to death at a 1968 free concert; and there was the time rap music came to the Gaza Strip. It started innocently enough. The official Palestinian rally for Gaza’s ”liberation” from Israel was winding down on Wednesday afternoon when a throbbing bass groove shook the ground.
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/ 15 September 2005
An Australian on Thursday admitted trying to hire a hitman to murder a teenage girl who had accused his son of rape. The plan to murder the girl came unstuck when Chouaki Bou-Antoun asked an undercover police officer to carry out the hit. Chouaki Bou-Antoun (50) pleaded guilty in the New South Wales District Court to soliciting the murder of the girl in December 2003.
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/ 15 September 2005
Western donors on Thursday urged the Ethiopian opposition parties to drop their threat of boycotting Parliament as a protest for alleged widespread fraud and irregularities in the May elections. In August the European Union said that the elections failed to meet international standards in several key respects, including post-vote investigations into fraud.
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/ 15 September 2005
Japan’s largest opposition party is looking both at veteran leaders and fresh young faces to help it recover after it lost to Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi in a record drubbing. The Democratic Party of Japan is set to elect a new leader on Saturday after Katsuya Okada, a dour former civil servant, quit over the election rout in which the party lost one third of its seats.
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/ 15 September 2005
Hundreds of people continued to cross the border between Gaza and Egypt unhindered on Thursday despite efforts by police on both sides of the frontier to assert control. Around 30 Palestinian police and 20 Egyptian border guards took up positions at dawn on the main road straddling the border but just hours later they failed to stop a group of Palestinians.
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/ 15 September 2005
South African Reserve Bank (SARB) Governor Tito Mboweni reiterated on Thursday that the SARB prefers to leave the determination of the exchange rate to market forces. On rare occasions, the bank might comment on evidence pointing to possible excesses in price formation in the foreign-exchange market.