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/ 21 December 2004
The cash-rich oil company Surgutneftegaz is the mystery purchaser of the main assets of Russia’s Yukos empire, auctioned for ,35-billion to a shell company, press reports said on Tuesday. The head of Russia’s big business body criticised the opaque sale and warned it will damage the country’s investment image.
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/ 21 December 2004
Save the Children United Kingdom is pulling out of the Darfur region of Sudan because four of its workers have been killed there, the group said on Tuesday. The aid organisation said the decision was agonising but is necessary because risks to staff are too great. Disease and famine have killed 70 000 in Darfur since March.
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/ 21 December 2004
The Department of Health has rejected media speculation that it is backtracking on its intention to appeal in the Constitutional Court a ruling by the Supreme Court of Appeal voiding its medicine-pricing regulations. On Monday, the Department of Health gave notice it intends to take its fight further to maintain the regulations.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=BreakingNews-National&ao=177004">’The judgement was wrong'</a>
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/ 21 December 2004
Augusto Pinochet will stand trial for atrocities from his 17-year regime in Chile, a Santiago court ruled unanimously on Monday, as the 89-year-old former dictator recovered in a hospital from a stroke. Pinochet has never stood trial for any of the approximately 3 000 political opponents killed during the dictatorship.
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/ 21 December 2004
Harry Potter readers, here’s an extra special holiday gift: JK Rowling announced that she has completed the sixth Potter novel, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. The book will go on sale in Britain and the United States on July 16, publishers said on Tuesday. Rowling has said that one of her characters will not survive her sixth book.
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/ 21 December 2004
A passenger bus careered off a mountain road in Peru and plunged into a jungle river, killing 49 people and injuring 15 others, police said. The accident occurred on Sunday in the Andean jungle, 346km north-east of the capital, officer Juan Siu Gomez said on Monday via telephone from Aguaytia, near the crash site.
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/ 21 December 2004
The Hong Kong customs office on Tuesday kicked up a stink over what it called a ”fart bomb toy”, describing it as unsafe. The small silver metallic bag, showing a cheeky boy with his trousers down emitting a cloud that reads ”boom”, contains a powdered sulphur compound and a small plastic bag of diluted acid.
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/ 21 December 2004
Media fuss about admission tests for universities is unfounded, as the minister of education and the universities are not in disagreement on the matter, the ministry said on Monday. ”It is highly regrettable that certain political parties have chosen to exploit the matter for petty point-scoring,” said ministry spokesperson Rob Turrell.
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/ 21 December 2004
Zambian police have released all 68 protesters, including several MPs, who were arrested for participating in a banned opposition demonstration to demand a new Constitution, an official said on Tuesday. ”They will appear in court soon,” police spokesperson Brenda Muntemba said.
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/ 21 December 2004
Police on Tuesday arrested four suspects who allegedly killed a Heidelberg farmer by dragging him behind his own vehicle with a rope tied round his neck, spokesperson Superintendent Andy Pieke said. The body of Joaquim Homem de Gouveia (70) was found on December 18 on a deserted area of the farm.