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/ 6 February 2005
Nato rescue workers and hundreds of police were trying to reach the wreckage of an Afghan airliner on Sunday, three days after it collided with a snow-covered mountain in an accident that is believed to have killed all 104 people on board. Nato helicopters spotted the tail and other debris from the Boeing 737-200 on Saturday.
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/ 6 February 2005
Togo President Gnassingbe Eyadema, whose 38-year repressive reign over his tiny, impoverished country made him Africa’s longest-ruling leader, died of what aides said was a heart attack on Saturday, and the military immediately named his son as his successor. Worldwide, only Cuba’s Fidel Castro has held power longer.
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/ 6 February 2005
If the initial results of last Sunday’s Iraqi elections prove to represent the final picture, the centre of political gravity has shifted inexorably south — away from the violence of the cities of the north, away from Baghdad and that city’s technocratic class — towards the poverty-stricken, dust-blown Shia heartland.
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/ 6 February 2005
British intelligence officials played a crucial part in the secret abduction of United Kingdom citizen Martin Mubanga to Guantanamo Bay. There, he reveals on Sunday in an exclusive interview, he endured 33 months of ill-treatment and often abusive interrogation. Mubanga, who was released without charge, now plans to sue the British government.
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/ 6 February 2005
South Africa and England go into the fourth Standard Bank one-day international at Newlands in Cape Town on Sunday with a win each, but the South Africans may have the edge over the visitors ahead of the fourth match. Coach Ray Jennings said on Saturday that the team have shown their class by chasing two big totals and getting them.
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/ 5 February 2005
Last week’s Sunday Times ran an excellent piece which told the story of how some fine descriptive writing by the Wits University academic, Lindsay Bremner, appeared almost verbatim in a Pamela Jooste novel. Reading the story, my first reaction was one of heartfelt pity for poor Darrel Bristow-Bovey, toppled so summarily from his hard-earned status as South Africa’s leading-edge plagiarist.
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/ 5 February 2005
Postmen will no longer deliver the mail on foot to a residential street in Britain due to fear of being savaged by a growling dog. Over the past few months, the roaming collie has terrorised postmen on Manor Crescent in Swindon, in the south of England, preventing them at times from delivering letters and parcels completely.
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/ 5 February 2005
Oscar Pistorius, the sensational schoolboy sprinter, broke his world 200m record for double below-the-knee amputees in his first major race against able-bodied athletes at the opening Absa Series meeting in Potchefstroom on Friday night. The matriculant from Pretoria Boys’ High surged to 21,83 seconds in ideal conditions.
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/ 5 February 2005
Whenever I travel — and when in polite society — I use a poached-eggs index to ascertain the overall quality of the place — by scoring the state in which the egg arrives at my table. My private, and more accurate, measure though, is that of the American oil baron JD Rockefeller, who once said: "Before choosing your hotel, order a martini. Then you’ll know about the quality of the establishment."
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/ 5 February 2005
Rescuers on Friday found the first pieces of wreckage of a plane carrying 104 passengers that crashed in a snowstorm near the Afghan capital, Kabul, on Thursday. Afghan and international troops spent Friday scouring the mountains near Kabul for signs of the Boeing 737-200.