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/ 27 October 2006
Warning: you might get a severe case of déjà vu reading this. It’s not my fault. Two weeks ago, the Champions League featured Chelsea seeing off Barcelona, Liverpool sinking Bordeaux, Manchester United too good for not-so-wonderful Copenhagen, Celtic shocking Benfica and Arsenal coming home from freezing Moscow with their diminished tails between their legs.
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/ 27 October 2006
Goals give a player authority. With his commanding drive that delivered a 1-0 win over Barcelona at Stamford Bridge, Didier Drogba played like a leader of the Chelsea team and also spoke like one afterwards. At present he has a higher status than at any point since he moved to England two years ago. The Ivorian knows that he has not so much hit a new peak as belatedly rediscovered his old self.
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/ 27 October 2006
French President Jacques Chirac visited the central Chinese industrial city of Wuhan on Friday, aiming to boost French efforts to tap into China’s fast-growing economy. Buoyed by more than -billion in deals bagged on Thursday in Beijing, where he met President Hu Jintao, the French leader openly lobbied for more contracts at a lunch with local business leaders.
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/ 27 October 2006
The tribal chiefs, in traditional robes and chequered headdresses, emerged from the dust stirred up by their convoy of pick-up trucks and walked towards the big white tent. The 35 Sunni sheikhs converged last week on Hindiya to swear their undying opposition to ”conspiracies” to partition Iraq and to pledge allegiance to their president, Saddam Hussein.
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/ 27 October 2006
The United Nation’s food agency on Thursday said a huge gap in funding could see food aid cut to up to 4,3-million people in the Southern Africa region. ”The -million funding shortfall comes just as the annual ‘lean season’ approaches, when people have to wait until next March or April for the next harvest,” a statement by the World Food Programme said.
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/ 27 October 2006
Six years after the emergence of the now infamous ”hanging chad” in the 2000 presidential elections, monitoring groups warn that technological glitches and hackers could throw next month’s mid-term elections into chaos. A report this week by electionline.org, a non-partisan organisation, anticipates problems at the ballot box in as many as 10 states.
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/ 27 October 2006
Nicaragua on Thursday night voted to outlaw all forms of abortion, including operations to save a pregnant woman’s life, after a campaign by the Catholic church. The main political parties supported a bill establishing jail sentences of six to 30 years for women who terminate their pregnancies and doctors who perform the procedure.
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/ 27 October 2006
Domestic inflationary pressures in South Africa remain on the boiler, despite the pullback in international energy prices, according to Moody’s <i>Economy.com</i>. Benchmark oil continues to hover around the $60 mark, dipping about 30% from its August peak in response to improved supply-side dynamics such as easing tensions in the Middle East.
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/ 27 October 2006
<b>MOVIE OF THE WEEK:</b> Shaun de Waal reviews <i>The Ice Harvest</i>, starring John Cusack and Billy Bob Thornton.
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/ 27 October 2006
The name of the late kwaito trailblazer will remain embedded in musical history, writes Maria McCloy.