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/ 9 December 2006
Tension was high in southern Somalia on Saturday as forces loyal to the powerful Islamists and Ethiopia-backed government troops reinforced defences, setting the stage for fresh clashes, witnesses and officials said. A day after the Islamists threatened to attack Baidoa, rival sides deployed fighters and armoury on two fronts preparing for a new round of fighting, they said.
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/ 9 December 2006
Hollywood’s take on conflict diamonds has brought attention back in a big way to how gems associated with wealth and glamour have too often meant war and suffering in Africa. The film Blood Diamond is set in late 1990s Sierra Leone, when the country was in the throes of a civil war in which untraceable diamonds allegedly funded fighters.
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/ 9 December 2006
A typhoon swept into the central Philippines on Saturday, a day after it forced the government to hastily shelve a gathering of Asian leaders on a resort island south of the storm’s projected path. Typhoon Utor is the second storm to batter the archipelago in as many weeks and brought gusts of up to 150kph and heavy rain to the island of Samar, about 600km south-east of Manila.
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/ 9 December 2006
A fire at a Moscow drug rehabilitation clinic on Saturday killed 45 female patients and staff whose attempts to flee were hampered by metal grilles blocking escape routes, emergency services said. The fire, which broke out in the early hours of the morning, was likely caused by arson, a senior firefighter said .
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/ 9 December 2006
Republican leaders in the United States Congress broke no rules but were negligent in their handling of a scandal involving a fellow lawmaker’s advances toward male aides, an ethics committee said. The House of Representatives’ ethics committee issued its findings on Friday after an investigation into the SMS sex scandal surrounding Republican Mark Foley.
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/ 9 December 2006
President George Bush and South African President Thabo Mbeki are asking for a stronger international push to make Sudan let the United Nations strengthen a peacekeeping force in the that country’s Darfur region. Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has refused to allow the dispatch of thousands of UN troops to Darfur to boost 7 000 African peacekeepers already there.
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/ 9 December 2006
The Pretoria High Court has ordered government officials who illegally deported three Chinese nationals to share in paying for the cost of flying them back to South Africa. Judge Essop Patel ruled this week that the deportations on December 2 of Fang Yan, Miexiang Gao and Wenyu Gao were unlawful and ”in breach and disobedience” of an earlier interim interdict preventing their deportation.
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/ 9 December 2006
The South African Academy Award nominated film Yesterday was well received at a film festival in Iran this week, the film’s producers said on Friday. Yesterday opened the inaugural SA Film Festival in Tehran at a gala screening hosted by SA ambassador in Iran Yusuf Saloojee, said Videovision Entertainment’s Nilesh Singh.
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/ 9 December 2006
A United Nations fact-finding mission to the Gaza Strip that was to be led by Desmond Tutu is in doubt because Israel has yet to give the Nobel laureate permission to enter the territory. Tutu was to begin leading a six-member team this weekend in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun to investigate the killings of 19 civilians in an Israeli artillery barrage last month.
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/ 9 December 2006
British military authorities are investigating allegations that Royal Marines shot indiscriminately on Afghan bystanders following a suicide bombing last weekend. At least two people died and five were wounded by shots fired from a supply convoy that raced through Kandahar after coming under attack.