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Zimbabwe’s Sports Minister, Aeneas Chigwedere, accused Britain on Wednesday of pressuring Greece into barring him from attending the Athens Olympics and described the decision as ”completely out of order”. EU member Greece announced on Tuesday it will bar Chigwedere from attending the Olympics.
Two trains collided head-on in north-western Turkey on Wednesday, killing six people and injuring about 30 others, an official said. Firefighters were trying to enter the first car of one of the trains to pull out passengers. The car was smashed and flipped over in the collision near the village of Tavsancil in Kocaeli province.
A man who once weighed more than 450kg has lost 144kg under the care of a team of doctors and hopes to lose 203kg more. Patrick Deuel (42) of Valentine, Nebraska, weighed 482kg when he was admitted to Sioux Falls’s Avera McKennan hospital eight weeks ago. Deuel is on a 1 200-calorie-a-day diet.
Four Russian doctors who were arrested as they tried to remove both kidneys from a critically injured but still living patient will stand trial for attempted murder, the Russian prosecutor’s office said on Wednesday. The doctors were planning to use the kidneys for transplantation.
National Assembly Speaker Baleka Mbete on Wednesday informed the African National Congress, the Democratic Alliance and the New National Party of the names of their MPs on the Scorpions’ preliminary list of 23 MPs allegedly linked to the parliamentary travel voucher scam. Only the DA was prepared to identify its MP.
Swiss authorities said on Wednesday that they have suspended all imports of poultry from South Africa indefinitely following the outbreak of bird flu in ostrich farms. Meanwhile, testing of ostriches for avian flu on Wednesday moved outside the quarantine area in the Eastern Cape where it was first detected.
Ostrich culling continues — in secret
A leading British group opposed to science involving embryos reacted angrily on Wednesday after the government gave a research team permission to use human cloning for the purposes of medical research. ”It is very worrying indeed,” said Josephine Quintavalle, of the group Comment on Reproductive Ethics.
Licence granted for embryo cloning
The death toll in an earthquake in southwest China rose to four, officials said on Wednesday as hospitals struggled to cope with the nearly 600 injured and rescuers continued searching for survivors. The quake, which measured 5,6 on the Richter scale, ripped through Ludian county in Yunnan province late on Tuesday.
Danish health officials on Wednesday banned several vitamin-enriched products of American breakfast cereal maker Kellogg, saying they could be harmful if eaten regularly. The 18 products include enriched versions of popular brands such as Corn Flakes, Rice Krispies and Special K.