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/ 22 December 2006
Some secrets, it turns out, are too old or too big to keep — even for the Bush administration, which has made a crusade of rooting out leaks and clamping down on information on the inner workings of government. In the new year, the CIA, FBI, state department and more than 80 other government agencies that handle state secrets will declassify hundreds of millions of pages of documents.
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/ 22 December 2006
The decision by the Gauteng department of agriculture, conservation and environment to approve the ”unsightly” overhead section of the Gautrain through Centurion is shocking, the Democratic Alliance said on Thursday. Sizwe Matshikiza, spokesperson for the department, said the approval of the project had followed normal processes.
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/ 22 December 2006
Sanath Jayasuriya blazed an unbeaten half-century to steer Sri Lanka to victory over New Zealand in their rain-affected Twenty20 international in Wellington on Friday. Sri Lanka were awarded victory by 18 runs under the Duckworth-Lewis system after racing to 62-1 off 5.5 overs in reply to New Zealand’s 162-8.
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/ 22 December 2006
George Sachirarwe would love to share Christmas with his family in rural Zimbabwe, but he is so strapped for cash he will stay put in Harare instead. ”I would have loved to go home but what would I buy for my parents? I can’t even afford to buy them the most basic goods,” says Sachirarwe, who works as a machine operator at a plastics factory in the capital.
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/ 22 December 2006
Eritrea dismissed on Friday reports by Amnesty International that accused the Red Sea state of arresting 500 parents of people who fled the country illegally to avoid conscription. Asmara routinely denies rights criticism from abroad, saying the world has long been prejudiced against it and in favour of the Horn of Africa’s main power, Ethiopia.
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/ 22 December 2006
Eritrean President Issaias Afeworki this week held talks with a Sudanese government delegation to boost dialogue aimed at ending a conflict in the troubled Darfur region, officials said on Friday. Issaias met the delegation, headed by Sudanese presidential assistant Nafie Ali Nafie, in the Eritrean Red Sea port of Massawa on Thursday, they said.
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/ 22 December 2006
Charges of reckless or negligent driving are being investigated against an Ekurhuleni metro police official, but police have refused to say whether the official is police chief Robert McBride. Witnesses have reportedly claimed McBride was ”blind-drunk” when he rolled his car on the R511 near Centurion on Thursday night.
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/ 22 December 2006
President Thabo Mbeki on Friday rubbished suggestions South Africa will fail to successfully stage the 2010 Fifa Soccer World Cup. The truth is South Africa is way ahead in preparations for hosting a successful tournament, he said in his last weekly newsletter for 2006 on the African National Congress website.
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/ 22 December 2006
Pakistan all-rounder Abdul Razzaq has been ruled out of the first two Tests in South Africa because of fitness concerns and appears likely to miss the entire series, a Pakistan Cricket Board official said on Friday. Razzaq injured a calf muscle in the final one-day international against the West Indies in Karachi on December 16.
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/ 22 December 2006
A week of diplomatic negotiations aimed at persuading North Korea to scrap its nuclear weapons ended with no progress on Friday, with envoys failing even to set a firm date to meet again. The six parties agreed only to report to their capitals and ”reconvene at the earliest opportunity”, said a statement read by chief Chinese negotiator Wu Dawei.