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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 Inspector General Tafa Balogun has been replaced by an acting chief and will formally retire on March 6.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.
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/ 18 January 2005
World number six gold miner Harmony Gold is likely to extend the deadline for the take-up of its subsequent offer to Gold Fields shareholders to mid-March as the regulatory process related to its proposed merger has taken longer than expected. Harmony’s subsequent offer currently closes on February 4.
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/ 18 January 2005
Officials in Somalia’s capital on Tuesday urged the country’s interim government to return home from exile in neighboring Kenya, saying residents in bullet-scarred Mogadishu were ready to welcome it. ”Mogadishu is peaceful enough and ready to welcome the new Somali government as well as hand over national institutions,” said governor Abdullahi Firibi.
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/ 18 January 2005
Airbus on Tuesday lifted the curtain on its A380 super jumbo — the world’s biggest passenger aircraft that is set to eclipse Boeing’s 747 when it takes to the skies next year. The European company unveiled the aircraft, which can carry up to 840 passengers, at a glitzy ceremony at its headquarters in Toulouse, south-west France.