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/ 14 May 2008

Bush arrives in Israel as scandal clouds peace hopes

United States President George Bush arrived in the Middle East on Wednesday to celebrate Israel’s 60th birthday and try to energise peace efforts complicated by a corruption scandal that could topple Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. A smiling Olmert and his wife, Aliza, greeted the president and First Lady Laura Bush at a red-carpet ceremony at Tel Aviv’s Ben-Gurion Airport.

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/ 29 May 2007

‘There’s a leopard in my bedroom’

A 45-year-old Israeli man woke up in the middle of the night to find a leopard staring at him and dangling his cat between its teeth, Israeli newspapers reported on Tuesday. But rather than fleeing, the man jumped on to the leopard, which let go of the cat. He wrestled with it and held it down for about 20 minutes until help arrived.

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/ 28 May 2007

Israeli leader risks losing office

Israel’s government faces fresh upheaval on Monday when the Labour party begins primaries for a new leader who could deal a final blow to Ehud Olmert’s tenure as Prime Minister. The two leading contenders to take the party’s helm from Peretz have said that they will work to get rid of Olmert.

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/ 25 March 2007

English stars bewildered by loss of form

Steven Gerrard has admitted that England did not deserve to beat Israel and acknowledged that he and his teammates are now underdogs in the fight to reach the Euro 2008 finals. A goalless draw in Tel Aviv on Saturday night resulted in Steve McClaren’s squad falling further behind Croatia and Russia in Group E.

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/ 23 February 2007

Israeli couple’s charity has unwanted outcome

An Israeli couple who bought sandals for an impoverished man has learned the hard way that no good deed goes unpunished. They were ordered to pay damages when the recipient of their gift said the footwear caused him back problems. They bought a needy fellow resident a pair of Italian-made orthopaedic sandals in April last year.

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/ 25 September 2006

Israel seen lifting nuclear veil in Iran stand-off

In October 1973, with its forces battling to repel invasions by Egypt and Syria, Israel did what had previously been unthinkable: It briefly wheeled its nuclear-capable Jericho-1 missiles out of their secret silos. That, historians believe, was picked up by United States spy satellites and stirred up fears in Washington of a catastrophic flare-up between the Jewish state and the Soviet-backed Arabs.

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/ 17 April 2006

Bomber kills nine in Tel Aviv

Nine people were killed and dozens wounded in Israel’s commercial capital Tel Aviv on Monday when a Palestinian bomber blew himself up in the deadliest suicide attack of the last 20 months. The blast took place hours before the swearing in of the new Israeli Parliament and prompted a pledge by prime minister designate Ehud Olmert that its perpetrators would not go unpunished.

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/ 23 December 2005

Israel won’t accept Hamas in poll

The Palestinian Authority will postpone parliamentary elections if Israel bars Palestinian residents of Jerusalem from participating. Israeli officials said they would not allow voting in East Jerusalem as part of the elections scheduled for January 25 if the Palestinian Islamic militant group Hamas was involved.

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/ 14 November 2005

Marriage is a dog’s life

Claiming her marriage has — literally — gone to the dogs, or at least to one in particular, an Israeli woman is demanding her husband pay her alimony since he devotes more attention to the family Dobermann than to her. Media reports said that in a claim the 39-year-old woman submitted via her attorney, she says the Dobermann ”is the centre of the husband’s life”.

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/ 13 November 2005

Jordan’s fragile calm destroyed

At least 57 people were killed and more than 100 injured when suicide bombers blew themselves up at three hotels in Amman, the capital of Jordan, on Wednesday night. The hotels — the Grand Hyatt, Radisson SAS and Days Inn — were popular with foreigners and many of the guests were involved in work in Iraq.

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/ 12 August 2005

Tens of thousands protest Israel’s pull-out plan

Tens of thousands of anti-pull-out protesters filled a square in downtown Tel Aviv, vowing that Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza and part of the West Bank will not happen, but most settlers were leaving a village in northern Gaza. The demonstrators filled the square in front of Tel Aviv City Hall, named after prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was gunned down there after a peace rally in 1995.

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/ 22 July 2005

Israel may outlaw anorexic models

Adi Barkan, an Israeli photographer and model agent, became acutely aware of the pervasiveness of anorexia when he interviewed 12 000 females, aged 13 to 24, in a televised search for Israel’s next supermodel. He estimated that between 35% and 40% of these aspiring models were anorexic. This realisation persuaded him to launch a crusade to combat it within his industry.

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/ 18 July 2005

Good medal haul for SA in Israel

Going into the second week of the Maccabi Games in Tel Aviv, Israel, the South African delegation have already earned five gold medals, equalling the total won at the previous Games in 2001. In the triathlon event, South Africa ended up with two golds, one silver and a bronze.

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/ 26 February 2005

Tel Aviv bomb rocks peace process

Tentative hopes of reviving the Middle East peace process were jolted on Friday night when a suicide bomber blew himself up outside a seafront karaoke nightclub in Tel Aviv, killing at least three people and wounding dozens. An air of palpable shock hung heavy over Israel’s second city after the first suicide bombing in Israel for almost four months.