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/ 4 November 2004
Ayaan Hirsi Ali has called the prophet Muhammad a ”lecherous tyrant”, Islam a ”backward religion”, and the Koran ”in part a licence for oppression”. Theo van Gogh dubbed Muslims ”goat-fuckers”, a radical Islamic leader ”Allah’s pimp”, and Islam a ”retrograde and aggressive” faith.
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/ 4 November 2004
Botswana’s High Court on Wednesday resumed hearings into a land claim case brought by San Bushmen challenging their resettlement from what they claim is ancestral land in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. After a three-month break, the High Court began hearing the state present its case in Lobatse, south of the capital, but the proceedings quickly got bogged down.
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/ 4 November 2004
Twenty-four percent of urban-dwelling South Africans are in favour of abortion on demand, a market research company said on Thursday. Research Surveys said in a statement they had surveyed a sample of 500 adults living in metropolitan areas and with access to a landline telephone.
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/ 4 November 2004
United States war planes hammered suspected rebel positions in the Iraqi city of Fallujah early on Thursday, with some Iraqis believing US President George Bush’s election victory gives him full licence to quash the insurgency. Thousands of families have already fled the rebel city, 50km west of Baghdad.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=BreakingNews-InternationalNews&ao=124936">Saddam prosecution could be foiled</a>
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/ 4 November 2004
The magistrate in charge of the Palazzolo inquiry called on Wednesday for a change in the law to allow foreign judicial officers more of a role in similar hearings. Towards the end of the day on Wednesday, Cape Town magistrate Derek Winter commented on what he said was the ”problematic nature of these proceedings”.
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/ 4 November 2004
The president of Somalia’s transitional federal government, Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, on Wednesday named Professor Ali Muhammad Gedi as his new prime minister. The appointment was made 10 days ahead of a deadline set by the country’s interim Constitution for the president to name a prime minister.
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/ 4 November 2004
Motor trade sales for August rose by 25,5% year-on-year (y/y) to R15,361-billion, Statistics South Africa said on Thursday. For the three months ended August, motor trade sales increased by 21,2% compared with the same period in 2003. The seasonally adjusted motor trade sales for the three months ended August 2004 increased by 10,2%.
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/ 4 November 2004
The initial market reaction of a surge in United States equities, a slump in the dollar and a sell-off in the US bond market to President George Bush’s re-election is likely to set the tone for his second four-year term of office. The reaction of US financial markets was reflected in South African financial markets.
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/ 4 November 2004
A lawyer for a woman sentenced to be stoned appealed before an Islamic court in northern Nigeria on Wednesday against her conviction for adultery. Daso Adamu (25) contested her conviction on the basis that the father of her six-month-old child was a husband she divorced in 2001. The court in Ningi village in Bauchi state is expected to rule next month.
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/ 4 November 2004
The Israeli government was forced to postpone the annual budget vote in Parliament on Wednesday amid a continuing rebellion in the ruling Likud party over Ariel Sharon’s plan to pull Jewish settlers out of the Gaza Strip. With opposition support, the prime minister won a separate vote to provide compensation to about 8 500 Jewish settlers who would be forced to leave under the unilateral disengagement plan.