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/ 5 November 2003

The World XV

With the group stages over, it is my privilege to name a Rugby World Cup 2003 Select XV, who will play Mars (or is it Uranus?) next week. That’s the problem with bloody World XVs… who do they play against? Anyway, I’ve sifted through the memory banks, had a chat with some of the other lads, and come up with this little lot…

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/ 5 November 2003

Malawi battles crafty dope sellers

Malawi police are losing the battle against crafty marijuana smugglers, who have evaded a nationwide clampdown by transporting the popular narcotic in hearses, coffins and ambulances, with the support of rogue government officials. Growers have come up with ingenious ways to avoid detection and transport their crops.

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/ 5 November 2003

Time will tell for teen mag

Teen girl magazines do not aspire to journalism’s cutting edge. They focus on celebrity fluff, feel-good features and fashion, beauty and boyfriend advice, an editorial strategy that locks up one of the most profitable niches in international publishing. But last week’s launch of the local version of <i>Seventeen</i>, reawakens old concerns about the formula’s local potential.

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/ 5 November 2003

JSE stuck in doldrums at noon

The JSE Securities Exchange South Africa was unable to shake off the weakness which emerged at the opening on Wednesday and was stuck in the red at noon. Dealers said the market was taking its cue from gloomier international markets, with an uninspiring close in the US, the Nikkei ended softer and European
markets are currently under pressure.

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/ 5 November 2003

The rebirth of District Six

The bulldozers were back in District Six last Tuesday, but this time it was to build, not destroy, and this time Noor Ebrahim was happy to see them. Three decades ago they rolled into his neighbourhood to erase a multiracial community that was an affront to apartheid, levelling houses, shops and cinemas to make way for a whites-only enclave.

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/ 5 November 2003

Sun, sea and dirty money

A potent brew of laundered money and northern Europeans seeking houses in the sun risks pushing Spain’s Costa del Sol, on its south eastern shores and which is in the throes of a construction boom, into the control of organised criminal gangs, a university report has warned.