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/ 5 January 2001

No protection for witnesses who refuse to relocate

Marianne Merten Several Western Cape residents in witness protection who are refusing to leave the province despite the Christmas murder of two state witnesses face the choice: relocate or leave the programme. The head of the Office for Witness Protection, Director Piet Kleynhans, said a decision on this handful of witnesses to Cape criminal trials, […]

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/ 5 January 2001

Night of the Hunter

Ian Penman Fear and Loathing in America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist 1968-76 by Hunter S Thompson, edited by Douglas Brinkley (Bloomsbury) As a writer bin all that “cultural icon” stuff, all the cartoon strips and cocaine blizzards and Colorado screamin’ it is hard to see Hunter S Thompson as much more than […]

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/ 5 January 2001

movies opening this week

Thomas and the Magic Railroad. A mixture of live action, animation and modelling, Thomas and the Magic Railroad is an Americanised version of the British TV series based on the Reverend W Awdry’s children’s books. It’s whimsical stuff about the interaction of the railway (sorry, railroad) systems of a real community and a magical one […]

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/ 5 January 2001

First steps on the long road to … Cardiff

Neal Collins soccer England’s bleak midwinter will enjoy a traditional post-New Year lift this weekend with the arrival of the Football Association Cup third round, comfortably the best weekend of mud-and-guts football to be found anywhere in the world. This is when the top clubs join the long road to erm … well, it was […]

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/ 5 January 2001

Dubya is strictly minor league

He’s the next president of the United States but George W Bush’s career details do not go beyond first base Simon Kuper ‘I never dreamed about being president,” says George W Bush. “When I was growing up, I wanted to be Willie Mays.” The legendary outfielder is the man Bush usually names as his childhood […]

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/ 5 January 2001

Cleva and classy

Michael Odell CD OFTHEWEEK You’ll have noticed that writing poetry in coffee shops, plundering jumble-sale threads and being love-battered yet plucky is now “in”. But just four years ago, if you were a female R&B act, you wore knee-high leather boots and demanded regular oral sex and housekeeping from your “nigga”, safe in the knowledge […]

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/ 5 January 2001

‘Bitches’ attack sexy adverts

Jon Henley in Paris As controversy rages in Britain and South Africa over the Steven Maisels’s sexy Sophie Dahl advertisement for Opium perfume, French feminists are turning up the heat in their war on a national ad industry that has long considered bare breasts an appropriate way to advertise anything from lawnmowers to low-fat margarine. […]

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/ 5 January 2001

Here?s your medicine – and pass the gravy

MEDICAL aid schemes have threatened to delete drugs from the lists of medicines they will cover for members unless pharmaceutical companies pay them substantial kickbacks, according to a report in The Star newspaper. Doctors will also be encouraged to get in on the act, with financial rewards for those who prescribe the drugs on the […]