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/ 27 January 2005
Fouling traffic and tempers, heavy snow fell on Thursday on much of Europe that had been spared winter’s full fury for weeks, giving Rome and the Mediterranean island of Mallorca a rare white blanket and playing havoc with Switzerland’s famously efficient trains. In Switzerland, winds of 172kph were clocked on Wednesday.
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/ 27 January 2005
The multinational relief effort in parts of Indonesia’s tsunami-hit Aceh province is chaotic, according to an official report seen on Thursday, as the number presumed dead continues to rise. ”The west coast of Aceh continues to receive aid and assistance in a chaotic manner,” says the report.
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/ 27 January 2005
The Johannesburg metro has committed R500-million to deal with the recent electricity cuts in the city, the mayoral committee said on Thursday. The power cuts are largely due to old cables, illegal connections and insufficient voltage from the cables, said Brian Hlongwa, a member of the committee responsible for municipal services.
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/ 27 January 2005
Wealthy countries ”deliberately” enlist doctors and nurses from poor nations, costing developing states -million a year in lost training, a top United Nations official said on Wednesday. Ndioro Ndiaye, deputy director general of the International Organisation for Migration, said the loss ”severely affects” Africa’s health sector.
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/ 27 January 2005
Heinrich von Pierer, outgoing chief executive of multinational Siemens, made a virtue of modesty on Thursday by telling shareholders in Munich how he had discovered one company employee in his 12 years at the helm who had never heard of him.
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/ 27 January 2005
Trade union Solidarity said on Thursday afternoon, after an emergency meeting with oil and chemicals group Sasol, that it has agreed to be part of the internal investigation following the explosion at Sasol’s Natref plant in Sasolburg on Wednesday. Seventeen people were injured in the explosion, Solidarity said.
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/ 27 January 2005
National Police Day will be held annually on January 27, National Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi said at the 10th anniversary of the establishment of the South African Police Service on Thursday. He said the anniversary is one of the milestones defining how far South Africa has come as a country.
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/ 27 January 2005
Côte d’Ivoire’s President Laurent Gbagbo refused once again to approve a key change to the Constitution voted for by Parliament which would allow a popular exiled opposition leader to run against him, press reports said on Thursday. ”How can I promulgate a proposed law which has not been voted on?” said Gbagbo.
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/ 27 January 2005
Music channel MTV’s first pan-African music channel, the long-anticipated MTV base, launches on February 22, it was announced on Thursday. MTV base will start broadcasting with a specially recorded message from African-American rap artist Xzibit. His words of welcome will be echoed by international and African artists as well as African music fans.
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/ 27 January 2005
It was when a topless woman appeared on screen speaking Italian that devout Christians Alan and Anne Leigh-Browne realised the Doris Day film they had bought might have been wrongly packaged. ”My wife and I were very shocked but we watched it until the end because we couldn’t believe what we were seeing,” he said.