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/ 21 December 2006

Passengers stranded as fog hits flights in London

Thousands of passengers were stranded on Thursday as heavy fog in southern England grounded hundreds of flights during one of the busiest travel periods of the year. About 500 people spent the night at London’s Heathrow airport after British Airways cancelled all domestic and some European flights to and from the airport due to poor visibility.

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/ 21 December 2006

Cape Town calls for water saving

The City of Cape Town has called on residents to save water in the light of the soaring summer temperatures, the city’s Water Demand Management Services said on Thursday. Spokesperson Danie Kloppers said the city had passed two new by-laws this year aimed at promoting permanent good water-management practices.

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/ 21 December 2006

Mbeki’s popularity wanes, says poll

South African President Thabo Mbeki’s approval rating has dropped to its lowest level in four years following a series of scandals involving the governing African National Congress party, a poll showed on Thursday. The poll, by the Johannesburg-based Research Surveys, showed that Mbeki has a 53% approval rating, 8% down on the figure recorded six months ago.

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/ 21 December 2006

Angola targets 50% cut in malaria

The Angola government launched a plan on Wednesday to halve the number of cases of malaria by the end of the decade in a country where up to 30 000 people are thought to die of the disease every year. ”Malaria is the deadliest disease in Angola,” Health Minister Sebastiao Veloso told a press conference.

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/ 21 December 2006

Shell pulls families from Nigeria after car bomb

The largest oil operator in Nigeria, Royal Dutch Shell, began evacuating hundreds of expatriate staff dependants from the Niger Delta on Thursday after militants planted a car bomb in a residential compound. The withdrawal began hours after armed militants stormed an oil facility operated by France’s Total in the delta’s Rivers state, killing three people, police said.

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/ 21 December 2006

MDC: Zim now targeting businesses

The Zimbabwean state has started another "blitzkrieg" — this time on businesses, threatening to take 51% of the equity in all foreign-owned concerns, the country’s opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) economics adviser Eddie Cross has said. Cross said there are already signs that foreign businesses are withdrawing from the embattled state.

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/ 21 December 2006

Angola sets presidential elections for 2009

A cross-party committee chaired by President Jose Eduardo dos Santos proposed that legislative elections take place in Angola in 2008 and a presidential vote in 2009, officials said on Thursday. Both elections had been expected to be held next year but the Council of the Republic unanimously agreed on a new timeframe at a meeting on Wednesday night, according to a statement.

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/ 21 December 2006

November PPI up 10%

South Africa’s producer price index (PPI) rose by 10% year-on-year (y/y) in November from a 10% year-on-year (y/y) increase in October, Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) said on Thursday. The PPI increased 0,5% on a monthly basis after October’s monthly increase of 1%.