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/ 5 February 2004
Malawian President Bakili Muluzi said on Thursday endemic corruption has ”slowed down” economic growth in the poor Southern African nation and repeated a warning that offenders will be punished. Muluzi did not elaborate on how much the economy has sufferred due to graft.
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/ 5 February 2004
Zimbabwe’s highest court threw out a constitutional challenge to the country’s sweeping media laws on Thursday, making it a criminal offense to work as a journalist without a licence. The Supreme Court ruling effectively puts journalists under the direct control of the government.
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/ 5 February 2004
Official opposition deputy finance spokesperson Pierre Rabie said he was certain that President Thabo Mbeki would avoid the Zimbabwe issue in his State of the Nation speech on Friday — what Mbeki’s Director General Frank Chikane described as one of the four "Hs": Harare , Hefer, HIV, and Haiti.<br>
<li><a class="standardtextsmall" href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=30622">State of the Nation: What experts say</a>
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/ 5 February 2004
President Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF) has retained the parliamentary constituency seat held by former vice president Simon Muzenda who died last year, Zimbabwean state radio reported on Wednesday.
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/ 5 February 2004
Former Vlakplaas commander Eugene de Kock and Pretoria local prison head Nick Baloyi were accused on Thursday of fabricating evidence to discredit a witness before the Jali commission of inquiry into prison mismanagement. Baloyi was accused of asking a prisoner to give false testimony and De Kock was also implicated.
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/ 5 February 2004
Britain’s defence minister on Thursday played down a spiralling row over pre-war information on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction after Prime Minister Tony Blair admitted he was in the dark about a key piece of intelligence. Blair on Wednesday said he had not been clear about what sort of weapons Iraq was alleged to possess.
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/ 5 February 2004
More than 10Â 000 birds died mysteriously in eastern China’s Jiangsu province, dropping like rain from the sky, state media reported on Thursday. Farmers and other witnesses in Sangongdian village in Taizhou city saw flocks of bramble finch suddenly fall from the sky on Tuesday.
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/ 5 February 2004
Five people hugged each other as their apartment building collapsed on Monday, crushing them to death in central Turkey, the Anatolia news agency reported on Thursday. Relief workers struggled to separate their bodies to be able to pull them out of the debris of the building. At least 38 people died in the collapse.
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/ 5 February 2004
The JSE Securities Exchange South Africa (JSE) was under pressure in noon trade on Thursday, with the stronger rand weighing on heavyweight dual-listed and resources stocks. The decline extended the bourse’s losing streak into its eighth day. At midday the rand was trading at R6,86 per dollar.
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/ 5 February 2004
The investigation into the appearance of the deadly poison ricin on Capitol Hill this week and earlier in two ominous letters is focusing on a mysterious ”Fallen Angel” who threatens to use ricin as a weapon unless new United States trucking regulations are rolled back.