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/ 30 December 2005
The head of the United Nations refugee agency said he was ”deeply shocked” that Egyptian riot police forcibly broke up a three-month protest outside UN offices in Cairo in which 10 Sudanese refugees were killed on Friday. ”I am deeply shocked and saddened by the tragic events early today in Cairo,” High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said in Geneva.
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/ 30 December 2005
Hopes of democratic elections in Angola during the new year faded on Friday after warnings it would take many months to register voters in the vast, mine-strewn Southern African nation.
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/ 30 December 2005
The Zimbabwe government has officially suspended the opposition mayor of the town of Chitungwiza for alleged misconduct, the mayor said on Friday. Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) mayor Misheck Shoko confirmed receiving a suspension letter on Thursday afternoon.
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/ 30 December 2005
France’s Stephane Peterhansel and Hiroshi Masuoka of Japan are overwhelming favourites to maintain Mitsubishi’s stranglehold on the Dakar Rally when the 28th edition of the race starts in Lisbon on Saturday. Peterhansel has clinched the last two to add to his six victories in the motorcycle section while Masuoka was the winner in 2002 and 2003.
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/ 30 December 2005
These are better days to be an American diplomat. After four years of humiliation and powerlessness under Colin Powell, the United States state department is enjoying a renaissance under new leadership. Condoleezza Rice may not have the stratospheric poll ratings of her predecessor, but she is still the most popular member of the Bush administration.
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/ 30 December 2005
Austria’s president on Thursday admitted that many of his citizens are ”fed up” with the European Union, as the country prepares to take over the EU presidency from Britain on Sunday. Heinz Fischer conceded that Austrians had ”cooled” on the EU, and warned that the bloc was not ”limitlessly expandable”.
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/ 30 December 2005
Sunni Arab groups in Iraq refused on Thursday to join talks about a new government until the United Nations reviews disputed results in the recent parliamentary elections. If they do attend, it will be ”only to look for solutions for the political crisis”, Dhafer al-Ani, spokesperson for the Iraqi Accordance Front — the main Sunni electoral bloc — told Reuters.
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/ 30 December 2005
Micro-credit facilities for men could emerge as a powerful tool to check the alarming increase in cases of violence against women in Kenya. Experts say that with easy access to small loans for income generating activities, men would have less time on their hands to be abusive.
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/ 30 December 2005
World oil prices eased on Friday on profit-taking ahead of the New Year but held on to the astonishing 40% gains made over the course of 2005, dealers said. New York’s main contract, light sweet crude for delivery in February, lost 45 cents to $59,87 per barrel in electronic trading.
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/ 30 December 2005
South Africans are bracing for political storm clouds in 2006 as the ruling African Nations Congress confronts its biggest crisis in more than a decade of power, but an economic boom could spread some sunshine. The turmoil surrounding the fate of former deputy president Jacob Zuma, once a frontrunner to succeed President Thabo Mbeki, has laid bare deep divisions within the ANC.