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/ 25 December 2006
China’s government, which suppresses a range of information deemed threatening to national security, now wants to keep weather forecasts from falling into the wrong hands, state press said on Monday. New regulations will clamp down on the illegal acquisition of Chinese meteorological information by foreigners.
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/ 25 December 2006
Surfing in Switzerland or Kansas could become as popular a sport as it is in Hawaii or California as a result of a startling project being pioneered by a maverick oceanographer. Professor Kerry Black has developed a series of techniques aimed at taking surfers from the beach to the confines of inland pools and reservoirs.
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/ 25 December 2006
A street entertainer put the shell of a broken television over his head, mimicked a TV performer and invited passers-by to do the same to make their children laugh — for a small donation. ”Hey, and you don’t need electricity for this television,” he quipped. His performance gave some Christmas cheer in an otherwise gloomy Harare shopping mall.
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/ 25 December 2006
The Channel Tunnel connecting the United Kingdom and France has been targeted by a group of Islamic militant terrorists aiming to cause maximum carnage during the holiday season, according to French and American secret services. The plan is revealed in a secret report to the French government on threat levels.
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/ 25 December 2006
The driver of a bus in which 12 people, including three children, died and 34 were injured in KwaZulu-Natal on Sunday was caught driving with his blood alcohol level seven times over the legal limit last year, it has emerged. Police said the driver lost control of the vehicle and it overturned, slamming into pillars under a bridge on the N3.
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/ 25 December 2006
A baby and four others were killed in a three-car pile-up between Barkley West and Kimberley in the Northern Cape, police said on Monday. Meanwhile, the Stormvoël tollgate on the N1 highway near Pretoria has been reopened after a tanker’s horse caught fire on Sunday night, Tshwane metro police said.
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/ 25 December 2006
James Brown, the legendary singer known as the "Godfather of Soul", died in Atlanta early on December 25, his agent said. He was 73. Brown was seen as a crucial figure in the evolution of gospel and R&B into soul and funk. His music also spanned genres such as rock, jazz, reggae and hip-hop.
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/ 25 December 2006
Once hunted almost to extinction for their beautiful pelts, the fur seal has staged one of the animal kingdom’s greatest comebacks. However, their occupation of the beaches dotted around the British colony of South Georgia, the southern Antarctic island where almost all of the world’s fur seals gather to breed, has not pleased everyone.
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/ 24 December 2006
Flash floods in Johannesburg have claimed the lives of three people and injured three more, emergency workers said on Sunday. Johannesburg Emergency Management Services spokesperson Malcolm Midgley said a 20-year-old man drowned when he was swept away in a flash flood after heavy rain in Motswaledi, Soweto, on Saturday.
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/ 24 December 2006
Ethiopian forces, committed to defending an interim Somali government holed up in the town of Baidoa, launched air strikes on Sunday against Islamist fighters across the country, witnesses said. It was the first use of air strikes and the first public admission by Ethiopia of its involvement in Somalia, whose interim government is surrounded by heavily armed fighters of the powerful Somalia Islamic Courts Council.