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/ 1 November 2003
A South African scheme which pays unemployed people to abseil down cliffs and hack plants with chainsaws is claimed to be a model for how the world should tackle invasive alien species. Now, the country has been chosen to spearhead an international initiative against destructive plants and wildlife.
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/ 1 November 2003
Academics in California have confirmed what every office worker in the land has known for years: we are drowning in a rising sea of information. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, say the amount of information being generated worldwide has increased by 30% each year since 1999.
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/ 1 November 2003
Iran appeared to have passed a stiff international test on its suspected nuclear weapons programme yesterday when the United Nations nuclear watchdog said Tehran had supplied its inspectors with a ”comprehensive” record of a project that goes back 20 years.
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/ 1 November 2003
The phenomenal success of Google, the internet search engine, has attracted the attention of the biggest name in hi-tech business, the Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Microsoft is said to be pursuing talks to buy the Silicon Valley firm, recently valued at between -billion and -billion.
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/ 1 November 2003
A rightwing German MP last night faced numerous calls for his resignation after he talked of ”the Jews” as a ”nation of perpetrators” and alleged they were responsible for the deaths of millions of people during the Russian revolution. In a speech to his constituents the MP claimed that Jewish people had a ”dark side”.
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/ 1 November 2003
A new scheme aimed at ending the ”blood diamond” trade will not stop the illicit commerce that fuels conflicts across Africa, say NGOs. About 60 countries attending a three-day conference in South Africa agreed to what they call a voluntary peer review system.
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/ 1 November 2003
There are two ways of looking at South Africa’s clinical demolition of big-hitting Samoa, which saw the Springboks beat the Pacific Islanders by 60 points to 10. Either England, who only sneaked past the islanders 35-22, aren’t as good as we thought. Or the Boks, with Derick Hougaard at fly-half, are a potent weapon.
Capostagno: The brilliant Hougaard
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/ 1 November 2003
South Africa are through to the quarterfinals of the World Cup where they will play New Zealand in Melbourne. They won their final pool match 60-10 against Samoa at the Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane. The Springboks were brilliant in the first half and dreadful in the third quarter.
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/ 31 October 2003
Recently an arts organisation of which I am a member received an invitation from the government to present its views at a hearing on a particular matter. There was just one problem with the invitation though. It came from the Department of Agriculture. Somehow, artists had been confused with farmers, writes Mike van Graan.