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/ 16 October 2003

Marais maintains innocence

Former Western Cape premier Peter Marais continued to protest his innocence in court on Thursday, despite Count Riccardo Agusta’s plea of guilty to corruption. Agusta has agreed to pay a R1-million fine, admitting that payments to Marais’s New National Party were meant to smooth the way for planning approval of his Roodefontein golf estate development.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=22112">Case against Marais strengthened</a>

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/ 16 October 2003

Trade union takes Denel to court

The trade union Solidarity is going to take arms manufacturer Denel to the Arbitration Court in terms of an amendment to the Labour Relations Act to enforce a 9,5% wage increase agreement. Earlier on Wednesday, Denel workers took part in a protest march for the first time in 36 years at three of its divisions.

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/ 16 October 2003

Journalist to fight Hefer ruling

Journalist Ranjeni Munusamy indicated on Thursday at the Hefer commission that she intended asking the high court to protect her from testifying before the commission. This followed a decision by Judge Joos Hefer that Munusamy must give evidence, although she could object to answering certain questions.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/pd.asp?ao=22068">Scramble for apartheid-era documents</a>

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/ 16 October 2003

Daily News turns to the courts

A Zimbabwe court is set to hear an appeal on Thursday by the <i>Daily News</i>, the country’s only private daily paper which was shut down last month, after being denied an operating licence, a lawyer said on Wednesday. Armed police forcibly shut down the paper on September 12 after the Supreme Court ruled that the papers were illegal because they were not registered with a government-appointed commission.

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/ 16 October 2003

Iraq war has swollen ranks of al-Qaeda

War in Iraq has swollen the ranks of al-Qaeda and ”galvanised its will” by increasing radical passions among Muslims, an authoritative think-tank said on Wednesday. The warning, echoing earlier ones by MI5 and MI6, was made in the annual report of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military Balance.

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/ 16 October 2003

Ten killed as Staten Island ferry crashes into dock

A Staten Island ferry slammed into a pier as it was docking on Wednesday, killing at least 10 people and injuring 34. The 64 metre ferry, carrying about 1 500 passengers, crashed into the enormous wooden pilings on the Staten Island end of its run from Manhattan, reducing the front of the boat to a mass of shattered planks, broken glass and twisted steel.

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/ 16 October 2003

A political fix soon forgotten

No matter the significant ring of its formal terms of reference, the Hefer Commission of Inquiry into whether National Director of Public Prosecutions Bulelani Ngcuka was a spy for the former apartheid government is little more than a political fix that will be discarded in a couple of months.