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/ 3 February 2005
Days after seizing power, King Gyandendra moved on Thursday to tighten his grip over Nepal by clamping down on the media — issuing a ban on independent news broadcasts and threatening to punish newspapers for reports that run counter to the official monarchist line. Meanwhile, a Maoist call for a nationwide strike went unheeded.
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/ 3 February 2005
Cobras and green mambas endanger the lives of children at a ”jungle school” in KwaZulu-Natal, the principal complained on Thursday. ”You can’t leave your teaching aids in the classes because the monkeys run in and destroy everything,” said Anastacia Mhlongo, principal of Engweni Primary School in the Dukuduku forest near Mtubatuba.
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/ 3 February 2005
Leaders from Africa’s Congo Basin gather in Brazzaville with international officials on Saturday for a conference on the threats facing the region’s vast forest expanses, one of the world’s two lungs. The seven-nation meeting aims to breathe life into a conservation treaty signed in 1999, but which has so far made little progress.
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/ 3 February 2005
South Africans interviewed in a survey on education had some disagreeable things to say, with about two-thirds of respondents agreeing education is in crisis and standards are falling. Asked if schools are better today than 10 years ago, 48% agreed, 46% disagreed and 6% did not know.
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/ 3 February 2005
SA Rugby bosses and the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee executive emerged full of smiles from talks on Thursday, adamant that common ground had been reached. ”I think this was an excellent meeting — it was long overdue,” said SA Rugby president Brian van Rooyen.
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/ 3 February 2005
Nelson Mandela on Thursday compared widespread poverty in developing countries to man-made evils such as slavery and apartheid, and urged wealthy nations to do more to fight it. He was speaking before a crowd of several thousand people at a rally in London on the eve of a meeting by the finance ministers of the Group of Seven industrialised nations.
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/ 3 February 2005
The African National Congress says the so-called "Travelgate" probe into the misuse of MPs’ travel vouchers has been carried out in a "vindictive" and "unplanned" manner. But the official opposition Democratic Alliance says the ruling party wants to "smear the Scorpions" and "obscure the culpability" of MPs.
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/ 3 February 2005
France will take steps to break up and ban all neo-Nazi groups on French soil after new figures showed that the number of violent attacks they committed more than doubled last year, the interior minister said on Wednesday. According to a French intelligence service report, up to 20 such groups are active, mainly in Alsace.
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/ 3 February 2005
The manager of a popular café vowed on Thursday to keep controversial portraits of the Czech Republic president and premier painted on the inside of café urinals. ”It’s democracy,” said Radek Helia of the Spolek café, a hangout for artists and bookworms in Brno.