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/ 6 December 2004
They used to say that the Dutch Reformed Church was the apartheid-wielding Nationalist Party at prayer. The NP in those days used to respond by characterising the non-racial South African Council of Churches (then headed by Desmond Tutu) as the African National Congress and its communist allies at prayer. Now we have a most undignified spat between the Presidency itself and our revered Tutu.
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/ 6 December 2004
Parliament is hoping to complete its plan to relocate the parliamentary media to new offices in Cape Town’s old South African Revenue Service building at 90 Plein Street before the start of next year’s session, Secretary to Parliament Zingile Dingani said on Monday.
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/ 6 December 2004
South African President Thabo Mbeki met his Côte d’Ivoire counterpart Laurent Gbagbo and other high-ranking officials on Monday as he wrapped up a four-day peace-making trip. Meanwhile, a key figure in Côte d’Ivoire’s struggling peace process resigned as the United Nations’s special envoy to the country.
Mbeki seen as ‘guarantee of peace’
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/ 6 December 2004
Five members of a Johannesburg youth group were on hunger strike at the Union Buildings on Monday in an attempt to get President Thabo Mbeki to address their problems with obtaining funding from the Umsobomvu Youth Fund to help finance the building of houses and establish commercial and industrial infrastructure south of Johannesburg.
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/ 6 December 2004
Three gamblers who used a James Bond-style laser device to win more than a million pounds (R11-million) at a London hotel casino will not face prosecution, as they did nothing illegal, police said on Sunday. The trio used gadgetry to calculate where a roulette ball would land.
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/ 6 December 2004
Viewers of the Animal Planet cable and satellite channel have voted the tiger the world’s favourite animal, narrowly beating the dog, according to a poll published on Monday on its website, <i>Animalplanet.co.uk</i>. More than 50 000 viewers from 73 countries voted in the poll.
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/ 6 December 2004
The Egyptian government on Sunday freed a convicted Israeli spy in a demonstration of goodwill which leaders of both countries hope will lead to progress on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In return, Israel released six Egyptians who illegally crossed the border with the aim of capturing an Israeli tank in August.
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/ 6 December 2004
The Spanish resort of Marbella on Sunday declared three days of mourning after a 10-year-old boy and an Italian hairdresser were killed in the crossfire of what appeared to be an underworld assassination attempt. The shootings bore the hallmarks of a Mafia-style hit, with three men drawing up in a car outside a hairdressing salon and peppering it with machine gun fire.
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/ 6 December 2004
An estimated 100-million paper birds were released on Sunday on the birthday of Thailand’s revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej as a goodwill gesture by the predominantly Buddhist kingdom towards a mainly Muslim region mired in communal violence.
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/ 6 December 2004
President Gloria Arroyo has banned logging in the Philippines after rampant deforestation was blamed for much of the devastation caused by four recent storms that have left more than 1 300 people dead or missing. Likening illegal loggers to terrorists, drug traffickers and kidnappers, Arroyo called for harsher penalties for anyone convicted of environmental destruction.