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/ 26 January 2005
Who will rise 86 storeys in about 45 minutes on February 1 and then plan on doing it again next year? The answer, if experience is a guide, is Chico Scimone, a 94-year-old Italian musician. Scimone will be among the more than 150 athletes taking part in the annual Fleet Empire State Building Run-Up.
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/ 26 January 2005
Bucking oppposition from conservative Islamists, Zanzibar’s Parliament on Wednesday repealed a controversial law that prescribed jail terms of up to two years for unmarried young women who fall pregnant. The jail sentence has been replaced with six months of community service for pregnant young women.
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/ 26 January 2005
A Metrolink commuter train derailed before dawn on Wednesday in the Los Angeles suburb of Glendale, killing at least four people and injuring many others, authorities said. Firefighters could be seen carrying injured people from the cars, as smoke wafted from twisted wreckage at the scene of the crash.
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/ 26 January 2005
More than 30 United States soldiers were reportedly killed in a helicopter crash on Wednesday, in the biggest single loss of life of American life in Iraq since the 2003 invasion, just four days before the country’s landmark elections. Meanwhile, more insurgents acted on threats to escalate violence ahead of the vote.
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/ 26 January 2005
The role of academics and judges is not to exercise power but to be watchdogs of it, said Judge Edwin Cameron at the opening of the Unisa academic year in Pretoria on Wednesday. ”Those who do not exercise power but stand in critical oversight to it must do so with humility,” said Cameron, addressing academics, diplomats and students.
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/ 26 January 2005
Troubled by the limp dollar and facing calls to do more to curb poverty and climate change, more than 2 000 political and business leaders have convened on Wednesday in the Swiss resort of Davos to talk, network and ponder the world’s pressing problems at the World Economic Forum, a corporate schmoozer’s dream nestled in the Swiss Alps.
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/ 26 January 2005
The South African Communist Party will lead a delegation of organisations concerned with landlessness to meet with Agri-SA to help expedite land reform, the SACP said on Tuesday. A date for the meeting has still to be negotiated, SACP secretary general Blade Nzimande told a meeting of organisations concerned with landlessness.
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/ 26 January 2005
South African Deputy President Jacob Zuma, chief mediator in attempts to end Burundi’s 11-year civil war, warned the country’s president on Wednesday not to try to amend a provisional Constitution to allow himself to run in upcoming elections. Zuma said any such changes would be contrary to a peace accord signed in Tanzania in 2000.
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/ 26 January 2005
Scattered garlands, strewn bangles, covered bodies and charred tea stalls and shops in western India bore mute testimony on Wednesday to a stampede that crushed at least 257 Hindu devotees on a temple pilgrimage — nearly a month after tsunamis smashed into southern Indian coastal areas, killing close to 11 000
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/ 26 January 2005
Gunmen opened fire on the local headquarters of three political parties north of Baghdad on Wednesday, killing an Iraqi policeman, a police official said. Insurgents attacked the Baquba offices of the Communist party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the United Iraqi Gathering with heavy machine gunfire.