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/ 1 November 2004

President of Burundi to retire from politics

War-ravaged Burundi’s transitional President, Domitien Ndayizeye, said on Monday he will retire from politics at the end of his term in office, which is due to expire in April next year. ”The last 18 months have been very tiring. I feel old enough not to continue in politics,” Ndayizeye, who is 52, told reporters.

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/ 1 November 2004

Police nab napping robber

A man allegedly broke in to a house in western Japan with the intention of robbing it, but was so drunk that he fell asleep in his victim’s home without stealing a thing, police said on Monday. The occupant returned to his home in Kobe city on Sunday afternoon to find the unemployed suspect asleep on the floor upstairs

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/ 1 November 2004

Making the world’s water safer to drink

Adding a naturally occurring mineral to water contaminated by arsenic could be a quick and cheap means of removing the toxic chemical, says the Science and Development Network. Water containing high concentrations of arsenic threatens the health of tens of millions of people, mainly in Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal.

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/ 1 November 2004

Tired Burundi president dreams of retirement

War-ravaged Burundi’s transitional president, Domitien Ndayizeye, said on Monday he would retire from politics at the end of his term in office, which is due to expire in April 2005. ”The last 18 months have been very tiring. I feel old enough not to continue in politics,” Ndayizeye, who is 52, told reporters.

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/ 1 November 2004

Writing’s on the door for Telkom

Solidarity, the mainly white trade union, and the left-leaning Congress of South African Trade Unions were to work jointly on Monday to protest against retrenchments by fixed-line monopoly Telkom — by posting 25 statements on the door of the National Assembly. The Assembly is to debate the Telkom retrenchments on Tuesday.

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/ 1 November 2004

Happy birthday, Hello Kitty

Japan’s Hello Kitty, the moon-faced, mouthless white cat, celebrated her 30th birthday on Monday, evolving from a nameless feline on a cheap vinyl purse into the money-making global icon of cuteness. Tamaki Hirayoshi, a 37-year-old woman in Tokyo, has collected about 1 000 Hello Kitty products over three decades.

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/ 1 November 2004

New film pokes fun at George’s ‘Bushisms’

”I know how hard it [is] for you to put food on your family,” a sympathetic United States President George Bush told baffled single mothers in one of his inimitable foot-in-mouth utterances. Just days ahead of Tuesday’s US presidential election, a new political film is taking a light-hearted poke at the lexicon of unique words and phrases invented by the leader of the free world.

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/ 1 November 2004

Outrage at guns for sterilisation policy

On the fringe of north India, five sweating men expertly scythe their way through a golden-green field of paddy. The air is thick with the whoosh of sharpened blades. Nearby, bullocks loll and veiled women walk carrying cowpats on their heads for use as fuel. Beneath the rural idyll, however, lies a village in torment because of a radical new population control measure: guns for sterilisation.

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/ 1 November 2004

Bishops want to create ‘African’ theology

Widening the growing global Anglican rift over homosexuality, Anglican bishops in Africa said on Monday they would stop theological training of African clergy in Western institutions. Bishops also were studying creation of a separate, ”African” theology rejecting gay clergy and same-sex marriages, they said.

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/ 1 November 2004

Africa is a ‘fertile ground for investment’

African leaders pitched on Monday for more trade and investment from Asia, saying they were pushing through economic and political reforms that will open up business opportunities in the continent. Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo told the opening of the two-day conference in Tokyo that the continent of more than 750-million people was rich with resources for Asian investors.