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/ 20 December 2006
”What did we do before we used candles?” ”We had electricity.” The joke has been told of various countries in Africa, perhaps none so fittingly as Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Fresh from its first free elections in over 40 years, Africa’s third biggest country may finally live up to its name, and is trying to get its chaotic economy back on track.
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/ 20 December 2006
The new year promises to be a volatile one politically in the lead-up to the election of the new African National Congress leader in December 2007, and this uncertainty is expected to have repercussions in the economy during the course of the year, particularly as to how foreigners react.
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/ 20 December 2006
Only 45 of the 38 000 police in Mumbai applied to earn an extra 250 rupees ($5,50) a month for losing weight, a report said on Wednesday. Indian authorities offered the cash, starting in November, to police officers who kept their weight under 70kg. Ahead of the end of the offer this month less than 0,01% of the force had bothered to apply, the <i>Mumbai Mirror</i> said.
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/ 20 December 2006
Football legend Ferenc Puskas, one of the greatest soccer players of all time, was one of several big names in football who died during the year. Puskas, who was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and had been confined to a hospital bed for the past six years, died of respiratory and circulatory failure in November aged 79.
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/ 20 December 2006
Deep inside the West Wing, across from the serving hatch for the White House cafeteria is a dark-paneled door that only the truly secure can enter. It opens into the Situation Room, where presidents plan wars, run top-secret operations and brainstorm crises at home and abroad.
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/ 20 December 2006
Officials from the Royal Thai Embassy in Pretoria have arrived in Durban after the arrest of 26 Thai women who are alleged to have been brought into the country to become sex slaves. Discussions were under way between the embassy’s second secretary, Jeerasak Pomsuwan, and officials from the Organised Crime Unit.
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/ 20 December 2006
Filmmaker Sharron Hawkes has gone from Butterworth to Timbuktu. Hawkes returned this week from a two-week trip to Timbuktu in Mali, where she is producing and directing a documentary on the conservation and research of hundreds of thousands of ancient manuscripts.
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/ 20 December 2006
Al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri said in a new video aired on Wednesday that only jihad (holy war), not elections, can bring about the liberation of the occupied Palestinian territory. "Any road other than jihad will only lead to loss," Osama bin Laden’s right-hand man said in the video broadcast on al-Jazeera television.
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/ 20 December 2006
Benni McCarthy has praised Uefa for dishing out a five-match ban to Wisla Krakow’s Nikola Mijailovic, the Serbian defender who was found guilty of racially abusing him during a Uefa Cup match in October. ”I was pleased with the way the situation was handled,” Blackburn’s South African forward said.
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/ 20 December 2006
Australia leg-spinner Shane Warne has set his sights on an Ashes whitewash and a 700th Test wicket in front of his home crowd at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Test cricket’s leading wicket-taker bowled Monty Panesar to seal the series-clinching victory in the third Test on Monday and he is already looking forward to the fourth match starting on December 26.