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/ 18 January 2005
Soviet-era compact television sets, known for bad reception and low picture quality, are finally popular — as homes for bats. A group of disabled workers in the south-eastern Czech Republic produces bat boxes from the Rubin TV sets’ sturdy plywood casing, which is hard to break and easily resists bad weather.
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/ 18 January 2005
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon met with army chiefs in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday and was briefed on plans to put a halt to rocket attacks by Palestinians, officials said. ”We must make the strongest possible effort to prevent the firing [of Qassams and mortars] at Israeli communities,” Sharon told troops in Gaza.
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/ 18 January 2005
Amnesty International has called for the war crimes committed during the Sudanese civil war to be investigated by prosecutors at the United Nations International Criminal Court in The Hague. In a report released in London on Tuesday, Amnesty urged the UN Security Council to refer the situation in Sudan to the special court.
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/ 18 January 2005
British Minister of Finance Gordon Brown claimed strong backing from his European Union colleagues on Tuesday for a plan to revive Africa through debt cancellation and a doubling in aid. Fresh from a four-nation African tour, Brown said a meeting of EU finance ministers agreed on the need to ease the burden of Africa’s debt.
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/ 18 January 2005
Nigeria’s police chief has taken early retirement after investigators probing money-laundering allegations found ,5-million (R45,6-million) hidden in a network of bank accounts, officials told said on Tuesday. Inspector General Tafa Balogun has been replaced by an acting chief and will formally retire on March 6.
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/ 18 January 2005
A new biography of Abraham Lincoln is making headlines with its assertion that the romantic leanings of the renowned 16th president of the United States were primarily homosexual. <i>The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln</i>, by CA Tripp, has ruffled more than a few feathers.
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/ 18 January 2005
A Catholic archbishop was freed in Iraq on Tuesday, less than 24 hours after he was kidnapped by gunmen in the country’s northern city of Mosul. Monsignor Basile Georges Casmoussa, the Iraqi city’s Syrian Catholic archbishop, was abducted by unidentified men on Monday afternoon during a pastoral visit in the city.
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/ 18 January 2005
Examination quality-assurance body Umalusi denied on Tuesday that it has cleared education department officials of involvement in alleged irregularities in last year’s Mpumalanga matric exams. The council rejected a finding, attributed to it by the Mpumalanga education department, that no officials had been involved.
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/ 18 January 2005
”Matrics, join the military!” was the call Minister of Defence Mosiuoa Lekota made on Tuesday to last year’s matric class. Lekota told journalists that he wants more matrics to consider the military as a career, saying defence is about more than warfare, it is also about developing a skilled and disciplined citizenry.
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/ 18 January 2005
One hundred and fifty people in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) were feared dead on Tuesday after a crowded boat capsized on the Kasai river between Ilebo and Tshikapa, the provincial governor said. The disaster occurred Sunday night, said Andre-Claudel Lubaya, speaking from Kananga, capital of the Kasai Occidental province.