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/ 12 February 2004
French public prosecutors said on Wednesday they had opened a money-laundering inquiry into suspect transfers totalling about â,¬9-million (about R78-million) into Paris bank accounts held by the wife of the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat. The Bank of France and an anti-laundering agency noticed payments of about â,¬1-million a month entering Suha Arafat’s accounts.
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/ 7 February 2004
The big worry in the bird-flu scare is that the virus, at present a low-scale killer, could mutate into a pathogen that could claim millions of lives. A mutated bird-flu virus erupted among humans in 1918, killing as many as 40-million people, and lesser pandemics occurred in 1957 and 1968.
Libya took a new step out of diplomatic isolation on Friday when it signed a deal in Paris offering -million dollars in compensation for the bombing of a French airliner over the Sahara in 1989.
A pair of German scientists have become early frontrunners for the 2004 ”Ig Nobels” — the annual awards handed out for eccentric research — thanks to their work in calculating the pooping power of penguins. These flightless birds are known to expel their faeces with great force.
Europe’s mission to land a spacecraft on a comet is set for takeoff next month, officials said on Tuesday, a year after the project was delayed because of problems with a rocket launcher. The European Space Agency will propel the Rosetta craft into space on February 26 from a base in Kourou, French Guiana.
The year 2003 was a black year for press freedom, with 42 journalists killed and a dramatic increase in other violations, the watchdog group Reporters sans Frontières said in its round-up for the year. ”Every gauge of press freedom violations in 2003 stood at red alert,” it said in its annual report.
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/ 27 December 2003
The crash at Cotonou in West Africa of a Boeing 727 passenger plane belonging to a Guinea airline, piloted by a Libyan crew and without a proper flying licence, highlights problems of flying in Africa, experts say. The Christmas Day crash in the African state of Benin killed 113 people.
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/ 27 December 2003
The past 12 months have been the most dramatic year in the history of space exploration since the 1969 Apollo lunar landing, throwing up events whose importance will resound for decades to come, including the catastrophic loss of the United States shuttle Columbia.
Still no news from Beagle on Mars
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/ 25 December 2003
Air France cancelled several passenger flights to the United States over Christmas after US officials passed on ”credible” security threats involving passengers scheduled to fly to Los Angeles on flights from Paris. US officials have repeatedly warned that al-Qaeda terrorists may be eyeing Los Angeles International airport.
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/ 17 December 2003
Leaders from the boldest nuclear initiative since the Manhattan Project gather this weekend to decide on a beauty contest with a -billion prize: which country will host the world’s first large-scale nuclear fusion reactor.
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/ 9 December 2003
Rock and television star Ozzy Osbourne is in intensive care after a quad bike accident at his English country home. The long-haired, 55-year-old heavy metal star will always be remembered for his on-stage exploits in Des Moines, Iowa, when in a wild moment he bit the head off a live bat thrown on stage by a fan.
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/ 6 December 2003
Jacques Chirac hinted strongly yesterday that France will soon introduce legislation banning Muslim girls from wearing headscarves to school, saying most French people saw ”something aggressive” in the veil and that the secular state could not tolerate ”ostentatious signs of religious proselytism”.
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/ 1 December 2003
British astronomers say that Vega, one of the brightest stars in the sky, has a planetary system that is closer to our own solar system than any other so far discovered. ”Although we can’t directly observe the planets, they have created clumps in the dust around the star,” said astronomer Mark Wyatt.
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/ 19 November 2003
South African President Thabo Mbeki on Wednesday called for the signatories of a French-brokered peace accord for Côte d’Ivoire to come back to the negotiating table, amid fresh chaos in the West African state. ”The process of negotiation needs to be resumed because objectively, there’s a problem,” Mbeki said in France.
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/ 19 November 2003
South African President Thabo Mbeki on Tuesday called on the developed world to work with African nations to help the world’s poorest continent along the path to democracy and economic prosperity.
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/ 18 November 2003
South African President Thabo Mbeki arrived in France on Monday for a three-day state visit — the latest phase of a robust foreign policy agenda that has earned him status on the world stage but jeers at home.
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/ 14 November 2003
France’s mammoth Elf corruption case, probably the biggest political and corporate sleaze scandal to hit a Western democracy since World War II, drew to a close this week as three key former executives of the oil giant were jailed for up to five years.
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/ 14 November 2003
Three thousand volunteers were in Paris this week to attend the European Social Forum, the anti-globalisation movement’s combustion chamber for alternative political and social ideas.
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/ 31 October 2003
French President Jacques Chirac ended two days of intense but fruitless talks with France’s main political leaders this week still facing one of the most painful dilemmas of his long political career: whether or not to call a referendum to ratify Europe’s new Constitution.
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/ 20 October 2003
Papa Wemba, the Congolese music star accused of aiding an illegal immigration network in France and Belgium will resume his performances in Paris with a concert on Saturday. The 53-year-old Afropop musician, whose real name is Jules Shungu Wembadio Pene Kikumba, was released from a Paris prison on June 5 after he posted bail of 30 000 euros.
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/ 16 October 2003
Hermes, a large asteroid that skimmed by the Earth in 1937 but has never been seen again, has been spotted once more after years of effort by astronomers. Hermes created a stir when it flew by close to the Earth in October 1937 at a distance of less than a million kilometers.
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/ 6 September 2003
Several thousand protesters, some shouting ”the world is not a piece of merchandise”, demonstrated in Paris on Saturday against the upcoming World Trade Organisation summit in Mexico. Demonstrations were also organised in other French cities.
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/ 1 September 2003
Libya has reached an agreement with France on compensation for the 1989 bombing of a French airliner, says Libyan leader Moammar Gadaffi, adding that the deal should allow the Lockerbie case to be closed, and that it marked a fresh start in relations with the West.
France’s government is mulling whether to scrap a national holiday and make people work instead to finance better care for the elderly — the main victims of the recent heat wave estimated to have killed thousands.
Queen Elizabeth II’s new personal chef, Marc Flanagan, would not have missed the trip for the world: the British culinary wizard was in Paris this week to get a few pointers from an elite group of his peers.
Scientists believe they have unlocked the workings of an ancient Chinese herbal remedy which has become one of the brightest yet most puzzling hopes in the war against malaria.
Funeral parlours in Paris are turning away new arrivals as the heatwave in the region continues. At least 50 people, and maybe many more, have died in the French capital. Meanwhile, organised crime is being blamed for many of the forest fires raging in Italy.
Europe crippled by prolonged heatwave
President Charles Taylor on Thursday said he resented massive international pressure on him to leave Liberia, but reiterated a pledge to step down and hand over power to his deputy.
International peacekeeping forces have failed to ensure the safety of civilians in Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) troubled north-eastern Ituri region, the medical aid group Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF – Doctors without Borders) said on Friday.
Move over, Jamie Oliver and Nigella Lawson — the unknown author is making an impact on the cookbook market.
Noisy demonstrators demanding funds for HIV drugs in the developing world disrupted a major conference on Aids here on Monday but in doing so gained the beaming support of former South African president Nelson Mandela.
An extraordinary journey