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Nine American soldiers died when their helicopter was brought down by a rocket near Fallujah in central Iraq. Five people were killed when British soldiers and Iraqi police fired on a demonstration in Amara in southern Iraq after explosive devices were thrown. In Iran the Guardian Council, an unelected body of mullahs, banned hundreds of reformists, including 85 MPs, from standing in next month’s parliamentary elections. In Haiti, tens of thousands of demonstrators gathered in Port-au-Prince calling for the resignation of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. More than 90,000 people were reported to have sought refuge in Chad, out of the 600,000 people displaced by fighting that has continued in the Darfur region of southern Sudan since the breakdown of a ceasefire in December. Oil refineries in France, Germany, Italy and Spain experienced shortages because Turkish security measures and bad weather had slowed tankers carrying Russian oil through the Bosporus. In Vietnam three people died of avian flu, which has killed more than a million birds there; two tons of chickens a day were being incinerated in Ho Chi Minh City, and thousands of chickens also died in South Korea and Japan. King Mswati III of Swaziland announced that he would spend £10 million on building nine palaces to house seven of his wives and two future brides. Police in Madhya Pradesh, northern India, are to be paid an extra 30 rupees (35 pence) a month to grow moustaches, to give them an air of authority.
CSH
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