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/ 15 October 2003

Putting Harksen to bed

Untangling the financial web woven by arch-fraudster Jurgen Harksen has taken the best part of a decade, but the trustees of his insolvent estate feel the end is in sight. One of them, Michael Lane, said in Cape Town this week that there was still ”quite a lot” of litigation in process, with eight cases pending.

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/ 15 October 2003

$25m Gates gift to GM project under fire

Bill Gates is to donate at least -million to research into whether GM food can provide 840-million malnourished people with extra vitamins and micro-nutrients. But the first move by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has been criticised by development groups which said the research was ”scientifically unnecessary”.

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/ 15 October 2003

Shelter from the storm

Beyond the protracted anti-retroviral debate in South Africa is a worrying lack of attention to the "shelter and services needs" of families with members who are HIV-positive or living with Aids. Local government has been fingered as the villain for failing to deliver basic services — it must, argues a prominent scholar, get its act together.

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/ 15 October 2003

Plagiarism: The law is clear

The dramatic exit of columnist Darrel Bristow-Bovey from three newspapers and the exit of <i>Elle</i> editor Cynthia Vongai over allegations of plagiarism is a sign that media houses are taking the issue seriously. However, it has been suggested that no law against plagiarism per se exists in South Africa, and that it is not a legal term.

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/ 15 October 2003

Weekend paper wars begin in KZN

Media 24, Naspers’s print arm, has launched an assault on rival Independent Newspapers’s dominance of the Durban newspaper market. Under the title <i>Weekend Witness</i>, the Pietermaritzburg-based <i>Natal Witness</i> has introduced a Saturday paper aimed at Durban, the coast and inland KwaZulu-Natal.