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/ 18 October 2004
United States forces on Sunday continued their ferocious assault on Falluja in a military offensive apparently designed to bring the city back under the control of Iraq’s pro-US government. Fierce clashes broke out between US troops and insurgents on a highway east of Falluja, witnesses said, and in the southern part of the city.
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/ 18 October 2004
A young Thai man lost his penis to his knife-wielding wife and then forgot to bring his severed member with him to hospital, fatefully delaying a reattachment operation, news reports said on Monday. Sornlam Yotbanya (24) had a heated argument with his wife, Rungnapha Pongalee (32), on Sunday night about his mistress.
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/ 18 October 2004
The South African government has confirmed that Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will visit South Africa from Wednesday to Saturday and has defended the visit "in the context of ongoing efforts by South Africa to assist Israelis and Palestinians to find a long-lasting resolution to the political crisis currently affecting the Middle East".
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/ 18 October 2004
Schabir Shaik’s former personal assistant told the Durban High Court on Monday of a phone call in which Shaik asked Deputy President Jacob Zuma for help securing a slice of the arms deal. Bianca Singh said that at one point late in 1998 she was in Shaik’s office when his cellphone rang. She gathered that the caller was his brother Chippy, then head of acquisitions in the Department of Defence.
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/ 18 October 2004
World number-six gold miner Harmony is looking to create the world’s largest gold mining group with its hostile bid for world number-four gold miner Gold Fields, Harmony chief executive Bernard Swanepoel said on Monday. A combined Harmony-Gold Fields entity would have gold output of about 7,5-million troy ounces.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=BreakingNews-Business&ao=123854">Gold groups poised for merger</a>
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/ 18 October 2004
The JSE Securities Exchange (JSE) was in the red in noon trade on Monday, led down by gold miner Harmony as the market reacted to its proposed takeover of rival Gold Fields — which led the market’s upside. Excluding activity in these two stocks, volumes were extremely light.
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/ 18 October 2004
Two people were injured on Sunday when the roof of the departure terminal at Nairobi’s Wilson domestic airport caved in after an explosion of unknown origin, police said. Kenyan government spokesperson Alfred Mutua said that no-one was killed in the explosion.
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/ 18 October 2004
Violent treatment of women in Ethiopia and denial of development opportunities for them ”is a national disgrace,” World Bank chief James Wolfensohn said Sunday. Ethiopian women often are victims of female genital mutilation and bear the brunt of poverty, poor health care and lack of education. More than 70% of marriages in the country are by abduction, the National Committee on Traditional Practices of Ethiopia says.
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/ 18 October 2004
Hispanic voters are hot commodities this year, as President George Bush and Democrat John Kerry fight to win their support in what is expected to be an extremely close presidential election on November 2. There are more than seven million Hispanic voters in the United States, and their ballots could be decisive in five swing states where they make up a large chunk of the population.
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/ 18 October 2004
British pop singer Marc Almond, best known for the song Tainted Love, a global hit for his band Soft Cell in 1981, has been critically injured in a motorbike crash, police said on Monday. Almond (48) was riding as pillion passenger on the bike when it was involved in an accident with a car on Sunday afternoon in central London’s financial district.