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/ 18 November 2004
Young Russians are reluctant to be weaned off cigarettes and a drive to persuade them hand over their packets of fags in return for sweets on Thursday fell flat, organisers admitted. Militants of the youth section of the pro-Kremlin United Russia armed themselves with sweets which they hoped to exchange for 3 000 packets of cigarettes to mark an anti-smoking day in Russia’s port on the Pacific.
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/ 17 November 2004
Fed up with living with his mother, a 26-year-old Italian got himself arrested on Wednesday by hurling a rock at a police car and smashing one of its windows, the Ansa news agency reported. The incident took place in Florence after police were asked to intervene in a family squabble between a woman and her son.
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/ 17 November 2004
Musical legend Lionel Richie’s estranged wife was behind bars on Tuesday for allegedly allowing her boyfriend to turn her bathroom into an illegal cosmetic-surgery clinic, officials said. The boyfriend allegedly injected patients in her Beverly Hills bathroom with anti-wrinkle drugs that are not approved by United States drug regulators.
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/ 17 November 2004
Say goodbye to pillows on American Airlines MD-80 jets. The Fort Worth-based airline this week removed pillows from its 334 MD-80s in a move expected to save time and money by enabling workers to clean the cabins faster, said spokesperson Tim Wagner.
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/ 17 November 2004
An Israeli who tried to set sail for his native Moldova on a raft strung together with water bottles has been intercepted by coastal guards, the Maariv daily reported on Wednesday. ”I am not crazy,” Genadi Lambas (38) reportedly told coast guards after his raft was intercepted 28km from the Israeli coast.
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/ 17 November 2004
The rand dipped below the R6 to the dollar level after noon on Wednesday, spelling more trouble for exporters while giving consumers cause to smile, economists said. While the stronger currency could bring interest-rate cuts, lower petrol prices and a reduction in the price of consumer goods, exporters will find it difficult to stay competitive.
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/ 17 November 2004
South Africa’s film industry has embarked on a multimillion-rand marketing campaign to help consumers understand that supporting piracy is supporting crime. The campaign breaks at a time when the film industry estimates that as much as 50% of all DVDs in South Africa are illegal, pirated copies.
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/ 17 November 2004
The Egyptian capital, Cairo, was plagued on Wednesday by a huge swarm of locusts, but officials claimed the situation was under control. The locusts, numbering tens of thousands, moved across Cairo’s downtown area and continued heading south toward the agricultural areas of Helwan and Giza.
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/ 17 November 2004
President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that Russia will in the coming years acquire new nuclear weapon systems that other nuclear powers do not yet have and are unlikely to develop in the near future. Putin said Russia still views terrorism as the greatest threat to its national security, but should not forget about the nuclear threat.