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/ 7 February 2005
Togo’s Constitutional Court swore in 39-year-old Faure Gnassingbe as this tiny West African nation’s new president on Monday, despite volleys of international condemnation after the military installed him as his late father’s successor. The six-member court conducted the ceremony at the presidential palace.
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/ 7 February 2005
Kenyan anti-graft chief John Githongo on Monday resigned amid complaints from donors that the government is not doing enough to stamp out corruption. His resignation comes less than a week after the British High Commissioner to Kenya, Edward Clay, mounted a renewed attack on what he called major corruption in Kenya.
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/ 7 February 2005
A Pretoria woman was arrested at Cape Town International airport after allegedly admitting to having swallowed cocaine ”bullets” worth an estimated R1,9-million. The consignment is one of the largest found on one individual at the airport and is the ninth such arrest at the airport over the past few months.
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/ 7 February 2005
A range of international scientists are preparing to come to South Africa for this year’s national festival of science in Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape. The Sasol Scifest is not only considered the biggest science festival on the African continent, but it is also opening up dialogue between local and developed-world scientists.
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/ 7 February 2005
The Cook Islands appeared to have escaped the worst of Cyclone Meena despite earlier fears of widespread destruction, the New Zealand high commissioner to Rarotonga said on Monday. The cyclone battered houses on the islands, cut power and brought down trees but there were no reports of injury.
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/ 7 February 2005
The presiding judge in the sex-crimes trial of Pretoria advocate couple Dirk Prinsloo and Cezanne Visser urged lawyers on Monday to do everything possible to speed up the proceedings. The trial has become ”bogged down” in cross-examination, said Judge Essop Patel.
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/ 7 February 2005
Nepal’s new government, headed by King Gyanendra, has offered to hold unconditional talks with Maoist rebels to end an insurgency that has claimed more than 11 000 lives, state media said on Monday. Gyanendra, who controls the army, last week fired the government led by prime minister Sher Bahadur Deuba.
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/ 7 February 2005
A government agency’s ban on visitors bearing Lunar New Year gifts from entering its building to curb corruption has stirred ridicule from the public, state media said on Monday. Gift-giving is a long-practised tradition during the new-year period but in present-day China it has become a way to bribe government officials.
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/ 7 February 2005
The much-mentioned encrypted fax continued to take centre stage in the Schabir Shaik fraud and corruption trial in the Durban High Court on Monday. Prosecutor Billy Downer continued with his argument to admit as evidence seven documents, which the defence opposes.
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/ 7 February 2005
The long-awaited report of the Jali commission into corruption and maladministration in prisons could be out by mid-year, commission secretary Charles Frank said on Monday. ”We will do our best but I don’t foresee it being done before the beginning of June,” he said from his office in Durban.