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/ 6 September 2005
Alastair Kirk stopped going to school when he was 11. He is now 20, and not exactly a dropout — he went on being educated at home, sitting down every day to work through booklets of maths, english, science, history, geography, all couched in a unique style. ”Here are examples of interrogative sentences,” states one booklet in the curriculum he used, Accelerated Christian Education.
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/ 6 September 2005
Tropical storms have doubled in destructive potential in the past 30 years because ocean surfaces have become warmer, according to a leading climate researcher. This is the first time that an increase in the size, duration and power of tropical storms has been linked to global warming.
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/ 6 September 2005
Four Arab Israelis shot dead by a soldier opposed to the closure of the Gaza Strip settlements are not victims of ”terror” because their killer was Jewish, Israel’s Defence Ministry has ruled, and so their families are not entitled to the usual compensation for life.
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/ 6 September 2005
On May 8 1994, my husband was brutally murdered by armed militias in Rwanda. His parents, sisters, his uncles, aunts and cousins were also killed. My name was on a list to be killed the next day. At midnight I escaped, carrying my three small children and two others whose parents had also died.
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/ 6 September 2005
As someone who has spent the best part of 20 years covering global trade talks, I know from bitter experience that it takes a lot to elevate tariffs, quotas and subsidies on to the front page. Recently, however, reports that there are shiploads of ladies’ underwear lurking on the borders of the EU, due to a decision to limit imports from China, have elevated trade to the lead item on the BBC news.
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/ 6 September 2005
All is not lost in America. When George W Bush came out a couple of weeks ago in favour of teaching ”intelligent design” — the new manifestation of creationism — the press gave him a tremendous kicking. The Christian Taliban have not yet won. But, they are gaining on us. So far there have been legislative attempts in 13 states to have intelligent design added to the school curriculum.
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/ 5 September 2005
The party that overthrew a horrific junta in Ethiopia retained power through the ballot, but only after months of violence and allegations of vote-rigging that raised concerns about the future of democracy in the country. The Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front was on Monday declared the official winner of May 15 elections.
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/ 5 September 2005
The National Electricity Regulator (NER) has dismissed claims that it published an inaccurate report saying Johannesburg’s City Power was in a serious state of disrepair. City Power deputy president Silus Zimu said the NER report, released last week, contained inaccurate information.
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/ 5 September 2005
Once-bustling New Orleans was reduced on Monday to a few thousand people as rescuers went house to house searching for survivors of Hurricane Katrina and mobile morgues stood by to collect the dead. President George Bush made his second tour of the devastation in three days.
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/ 5 September 2005
Eleven people were killed on Monday when an Antonov-26 freight aircraft struck a tree near Isiro airport in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), aviation officials said. The death toll was higher than a provisional figure of seven given by local officials and the United Nations-funded Okapi radio.