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/ 20 December 2004
India’s capital made tracks into the future on Sunday when its first underground trains began to run. Designed to cut pollution and improve life for 14-million people crowded into the traffic-choked capital, the Delhi metro has been running an 18-stop overground service since March.
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/ 20 December 2004
Turkish euphoria at last week’s historic decision to open talks on European Union accession was tempered on Sunday when Cyprus warned that it could still veto membership. The Greek Cypriot leader has threatened to derail the process if Ankara does not expand its customs union with the EU to include the island.
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/ 20 December 2004
Enraged at his ex-wife’s remarriage, a Cambodian man dug up her daughter’s decomposing body and placed the exhumed corpse on his former wife’s doorstep, police said on Monday. The daughter, who was 25 when she died, had been buried for about six months, Pursat district police chief Pen Tung said.
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/ 20 December 2004
Leading Jewish settlers were meeting on Monday to decide whether to call for civil disobedience in protest at Israel’s planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and isolated settlements in the West Bank. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has all but signed a deal that will enable him to evacuate settlers from Gaza and the West Bank by the end of 2005.
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/ 20 December 2004
Street vendors who ply their trade in African cities aren’t generally viewed as posing a serious danger to public health. That is, unless one buys medicines and other forms of treatment from them — as the citizens of Gabon are discovering. The vendors sell smuggled and counterfeit treatments that are often cheaper that those available over the counter.
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/ 20 December 2004
Malawi’s President Bingu wa Mutharika over the weekend finally moved into a controversial -million palace that until now housed Parliament, a top official said on Monday. The building, with 300 air-conditioned rooms, is widely seen as a folly of the country’s founder president, Kamuzu Banda.
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/ 20 December 2004
The Sudanese government agreed to stop military operations in Darfur on Sunday, several hours after a ceasefire deadline expired. ”We will inform our forces in Darfur immediately to stop any fighting,” the Foreign Minister, Mustafa Osman Ismail, said after an emergency meeting with western diplomats and United Nations and African Union officials.
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/ 20 December 2004
Former president Nelson Mandela’s annual Christmas party for children was called off on Sunday amid a crush of pushing and shoving children and parents jostling for position in the queue for presents. The organisers had bargained on between 15 000 and 20 000 guests, but made provision for an extra 10 000, said Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund spokesperson, Archie Tsoku.
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/ 20 December 2004
Banking group FirstRand announced on Monday that the necessary commitments and approvals from various financial institutions for the funding of the third-party component of a proposed black economic empowerment (BEE) transaction have been secured. This paves the way for the deal to be implemented in the first quarter of 2005.
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/ 20 December 2004
Employment opportunities for matrics are looking considerably more favourable than they did last year, trade union Solidarity said in a statement on Monday. The findings of a study carried out by Solidarity show that about 60% of job hunters in 2005 should find employment within the next 12 months.