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/ 21 December 2006
A fragile ceasefire aimed at halting deadly clashes between rival Palestinian factions held in Gaza for a second day on Thursday as President Mahmoud Abbas urged all sides to consolidate the truce. No clashes between Abbas’s Fatah party and the ruling Hamas movement have been reported since early on Wednesday.
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/ 21 December 2006
Prince Charles won the latest round in a legal battle with a newspaper on Thursday over the unauthorised publication of his private journals, in which he called Chinese diplomats ”appalling old waxworks”. Two senior Court of Appeal judges upheld an earlier ruling that Queen Elizabeth’s eldest son and heir to the throne had a right to keep his diaries secret.
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/ 21 December 2006
Somalia’s Islamists are at war against Ethiopia, not the government, a hard-line Islamist leader said on Thursday, as fighting raged for a third day between his forces and pro-government troops. Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, who was speaking to the media by telephone, also accused Ethiopia of attacking the Islamists in southern Somalia.
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/ 21 December 2006
The Zimbabwean who tried to hijack a South African Airways (SAA) flight from Cape Town earlier this year is a ”paranoid delusional” and should be sent home for treatment, a psychiatrist has recommended. The recommendation was contained in a report handed in on Thursday to the Bellville Regional Court, where Tinashe Rioga (21) made another brief appearance.
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/ 21 December 2006
Cape Town mayor Helen Zille will be to blame if Cape Town loses the 2010 Soccer World Cup semifinal, Independent Democrats (ID) leader in the city council Simon Grindrod said on Thursday. ”I’m holding Helen Zille personally responsible if we lose the World Cup [event],” he said.
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/ 21 December 2006
Iraqi forces were told to cooperate with their Turkish counterparts during a 1980s campaign against Kurdish civilians, according to evidence presented on Thursday to a court trying Saddam Hussein. Prosecutors seeking to prove that the ousted Iraqi dictator ordered the slaughter of 182 000 Kurdish civilians in the 1988 Anfal campaign produced a series of Iraqi military documents.
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/ 21 December 2006
The January 1 implementation of reduced dispensing fees for pharmacists will be delayed after the Pharmacy Stakeholders Forum (PSF) and the Department of Health reached an agreement on the issue on Thursday. The PSF said the department agreed to suspend the implementation of the fees pending the outcome of a court challenge on the dispensing-fee regulations.
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/ 21 December 2006
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Thursday mocked United States President George Bush and said Iran’s nuclear programme was a source of inspiration for other nations. His typically outspoken remarks came after Bush said the Iranian president was out of step with the rest of the world.
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/ 21 December 2006
United States President George Bush called on Thursday for an increase in the size of the US military, deepening expectations that he will send up to 30 000 more troops to Iraq in the new year. Bush acknowledged that he had been taken aback by the eruption of sectarian violence in Iraq, and that it had been a difficult year.
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/ 21 December 2006
Shaun de Waal looks at three dramas opening in the holidays.