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/ 16 February 2005
Samoa appeared to escape the worst of Cyclone Olaf on Wednesday but a top official said it is expected to intensify and approach "super-cyclone" status as it bears down on neighbouring American Samoa and the Cook Islands. Olaf lashed Savai’i, the main island of Samoa, with winds of more than 200kph.
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/ 16 February 2005
Beeld newspaper editor Peet Kruger and freelance columnist Jeanne Goosen were ordered on Wednesday to appear before a Pretoria judge to explain why a column on the ”advocate Barbie” sex-crime trial contained wrong information. Judge Essop Patel ruled that the column appeared at first glance to be in contempt of court.
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/ 16 February 2005
An Islamic Sharia court in Kano, northern Nigeria, on Wednesday sentenced Abubakar Hamza to six months imprisonment and a fine equivalent to for living as a woman. Handing down the sentence, the court deplored 19-year-old Hamza’s use of female identity to sell aphrodisiacs and advised him to stop his ”immoral behaviour”.
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/ 16 February 2005
They are a familiar sight in New York, Dublin and Rome. But it seems groups of smokers puffing away outside restaurants stand little chance of appearing on the streets of Paris. The city council has admited that a scheme aimed at encouraging Paris’s 12 452 cafes, bistros and brasseries to declare themselves smoke-free zones had been adopted by barely 30.
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/ 16 February 2005
Backless panties that do not show above the rear of low-rider jeans have been invented by a woman in Australia, news reports said on Wednesday. Jan Digney, originally from New Zealand, said she was ”blown away” by reaction to her scrap of an invention, which was featured on New Zealand television.
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/ 16 February 2005
At least 40 members of Somalia’s interim government left Kenya on Wednesday for various regions of Somalia to explain the new government’s policies to the public, an official in Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Gedi’s office said. The trip is the latest indicator that momentum is building up for the Kenya-based Somali government to return home.
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/ 16 February 2005
A Spanish scientist who went blind discovered the cause of his retinal disease, making it possible to treat up to two million sufferers worldwide, the daily El Pais reported on Wednesday. Luis Carrasco (55) microbiology professor at Madrid’s Autonomous University, began losing his eyesight in 1994.
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/ 16 February 2005
Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki, faced with blistering criticism for not doing enough to fight rampant government corruption, on Wednesday renewed pledges to battle graft vigorously and in a transparent manner. ”We want everything known because there should be nothing secretive in the way we manage government affairs,” Kibaki said.
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/ 16 February 2005
North Korea marked the 63rd birthday of leader Kim Jong Il on Wednesday with feasts of pheasant and venison for the capital’s elite — and a healthy side order of propaganda — amid heightened tension on the Korean peninsula over the communist state’s nuclear weapons programme.
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/ 16 February 2005
Screaming and weeping mourners clambered around the coffin carrying the Lebanese flag-draped body of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri as hundreds of thousands of people attended an emotion-charged funeral service on Wednesday at a mosque, two days after Hariri was killed by a huge bomb.