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/ 2 December 2004
Swarms of locusts have invaded the Portuguese Argave region, one of Europe’s top tourist areas and home to some of the country’s most beautiful beaches. The locusts are the same species that recently swept across Spain’s Canary Islands, according to an expert at Lisbon’s Faculty of Science.
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/ 2 December 2004
Growth in new vehicle sales continued unabated with sales in November showing a 32,1% increase over sales during the same month in 2003. A total of 41 663 vehicles were sold during November, which brings the year’s sales to date to 413 639 units.
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/ 2 December 2004
More than 900 people are confirmed dead or missing in the eastern Philippines after two tropical storms triggered floods and mudslides this week. The worst-affected towns on the east coast of the main island, Luzon, are cut off from help because of destroyed roads and bridges. Aid flights have been suspended due to a third typhoon expected to hit Luzon on Thursday.
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/ 2 December 2004
A Japanese city council will require male employees to take a total of six weeks of paid leave before their babies’ first birthdays and then explain what they learned in a bid to end perceptions that child care is only a woman’s job, officials said on Thursday.
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/ 2 December 2004
Shopkeepers in the Christchurch suburb of New Brighton are mortified by the arrival of a funeral parlour in their rundown shopping mall that they have been trying to revitalise for years, a newspaper reported on Thursday. Roger Hunt of the local business association said the opening of the Starlight parlour in a former toy shop gave new meaning to the ”dead heart” of New Brighton.
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/ 2 December 2004
International concern was growing on Thursday after Rwandan President Paul Kagame announced that his country’s troops will launch an operation in pursuit of Rwandan Hutu rebels in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). In a letter to the African Union, Kagame wrote that he hoped the operation would not last longer than two weeks and that it would target only the rebels.
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/ 2 December 2004
A United Nations observer patrol encountered what it believed to be 100 Rwandan soldiers at a town in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), marking the first UN-reported sightings since Rwanda threatened to send its forces against Rwandan Hutu rebels. The UN Security Council set closed-door talks for Thursday on the crisis threatening to reawaken central Africa’s devastating five-year, six-nation war.
Incursion sparks world concern
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/ 2 December 2004
Three senior staffers have been suspended from the Eastern Cape Development Corporation and R30-million has been slashed from the parastatal’s budget. The disciplinery action was ordered by provincial minister for economic affairs, environment and tourism André de Wet. However, an auditor general’s report — one of two reports on which the minister says he based his decision to suspend the staff members — appears not to exist.
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/ 2 December 2004
South Africa’s Communications Minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri has called for greater "legitimate" government involvement in the governance of the internet. The minister told the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) meeting in Cape Town that: "We believe that legitimate governments as the true representatives of their country, should have an increased voice in the governance of the internet."
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=BreakingNews-Business&ao=126444">Convergence Bill set for January</a>
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/ 2 December 2004
Kanartel, the consortium led by the UAE’s Etisalat, will soon begin work on Sudan’s second fixed-line telephone network and plans to provide 500 000 lines in the first year of its operation, Etisalat CEO Mohammed Omran said in a statement Wednesday.