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/ 9 April 2004

Nigeria foils plot to oust president

Nigeria said on Thursday that a number of military officers had been arrested following reports of a coup plot against the president, Olusegun Obasanjo. The president’s spokesperson, Remi Oyo, said ”serious breaches of security”, had prompted an investigation which led to the arrests.

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/ 9 April 2004

So this is free Baghdad

Long before I arrived at the Iraq frontier I was thoroughly alarmed. On our 320km desert drive through Jordan, my driver, Ziad, wound me up. ”Near Baghdad,” he said, ”many Ali Baba! Three hundred kilometres, very bad!” The previous night, waiting at Heathrow for a long-delayed plane to Amman, I’d seen the news: four unarmed Americans killed driving through the Iraqi town of Falluja.

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/ 9 April 2004

Axed captain to sue Zimbabwe Cricket Union

Axed captain Heath Streak has threatened to sue the Zimbabwe Cricket Union for what he sees as his unjustified removal from the national captaincy. After failing to get ZCU chairman Peter Chingoka and chief executive Vincent Hogg to reinstall him at a meeting on Thursday, Streak said before returning to his Bulawayo farm on Friday that he would be consulting his lawyers.

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/ 8 April 2004

Airport strike over

The countrywide strike of airport baggage handlers, which started on December 18, has been resolved, the Congress of South African Trade Unions said on Thursday. Workers will get a 12% wage increase and a 2% performance incentive, and all workers dismissed during the strike will be reinstated.

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/ 8 April 2004

Insurgents threaten to burn hostages

Eight South Koreans and three Japanese were kidnapped by insurgents in Iraq, and captors armed with automatic rifles and swords threatened on Thursday to burn the Japanese alive if Tokyo does not withdraw from the United States-led coalition. The group calls itself the ”Mujahedeen Squadrons”.