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/ 24 October 2003

Scientists discover deep sea enigma

The creature, as viewed from the submarine moving about the ocean depths between Iceland and the Azores, was like nothing the marine biologists had seen before. It had a purple, lotus flower-shaped head perched atop a sinuous green stalk of a body measuring several centimetres long.

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/ 24 October 2003

Smugglers use tankers to steal Nigerian oil

What Nigerians call bunkering and oil executives call rustling has hit the big time: criminal gangs are siphoning so much crude oil from pipelines in the Niger delta that they have started using tankers to spirit it away. A Russian-registered tanker laden with 11300 tons of allegedly stolen crude has become the latest vessel intercepted by the Nigerian navy in the gulf of Guinea.

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/ 24 October 2003

Young Turks take the reins

Negotiators burned the midnight oil almost until dawn last Friday in the quest for a Financial Sector Charter that all could live with. The charter commits its signatories to job-creating investment, to the Proudly South African campaign (a labour-led "buy-local" initiative), and to local procurement.

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/ 24 October 2003

Give the world a human face

<i>Umuntu ngamuntu ngabantu</i> is the well-known Nguni adage that sets out the values of <i>ubuntu</i> — that a person is a person only through other people. Civil society groups have a bigger role to play than merely filling gaps left by governments, writes David Kalete

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/ 24 October 2003

Democracy über alles

I don’t have a problem with democracy. In fact some of my best friends are democrats. I think it’s lovely the way democracy boosts democratic values and nurtures the growth of, uh, good self-esteem. Democracy is so sublimely fart. Fair! I meant fair!

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/ 24 October 2003

Employees foot soaring medical bill

Employers have shifted rising medical costs to their employees over the past 10 years, and are increasingly reluctant to fund retirement health benefits, Old Mutual’s latest health-care survey finds. However, the survey also notes that employer attitudes towards HIV/Aids among their workers has improved.

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/ 24 October 2003

‘Morocco will back down’

It was a more confident Mohamed Abdelaziz who led the 11th congress of his Polisario Front last weekend, knowing that his exiled people have Morocco on the back foot. The North African kingdom has occupied the Western Sahara, which it invaded in 1975, in defiance of the international community.