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/ 25 November 2005

Whistleblower faces the axe

Parliament’s chief financial officer, Harry Charlton, has been abruptly suspended from his post, causing bewilderment and suspicion among parliamentary staff, members of Parliament, and opposition parties. Sources at the legislature say Zingile Dingani, the secretary to Parliament, called Charlton, to a meeting last Friday. After the meeting Charlton was immediately escorted off the premises.

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/ 25 November 2005

Tension runs high ahead of new round of Egypt polls

Egypt’s month-long elections are heating up as voters prepare for a new round on Sunday that could see Islamists chip away further at the ruling party’s dominance in Parliament. More than 120 seats remain to be decided in runoffs for the second phase, which kicked off on November 20 and prompted a surge in irregularities and violence that claimed the first deaths of the elections.

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/ 25 November 2005

Fulla charms her way into toy chests

A dark-eyed, veiled doll called Fulla has invaded Arab toy chests, bringing a touch of the Muslim Middle East to a domain once dominated by the blonde blue-eyed Barbie. Fulla, like many Muslim women in the Arab world, has two sets of clothing. Form-fitting, revealing outfits are sported at home, while items that cover the arms, legs, neck and often the hair are donned in public.

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/ 25 November 2005

After 23 years in hiding, brothers face new Iraq

When, after the fall of Saddam Hussein, brothers Saad and Ibrahim left their family home in the leafy middle-class Baghdad neighbourhood of Karada for the first time in two decades, they promptly got lost. After all, things had changed quite a bit over the 23 years that the al-Qaisi brothers had spent hidden away from Saddam’s secret services in a small upstairs room.

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/ 25 November 2005

Zim’s Senate polls ring death knell for opposition

Elections to a new Senate in Zimbabwe this weekend appear to have sounded the death knell for a party that posed the stiffest challenge to President Robert Mugabe’s rule. The elections have exposed deep divisions in the opposition Movement for Democratic Change party and chances of two feuding factions reconciling have grown slimmer in the run-up to Saturday’s polls.

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/ 25 November 2005

Woman MPs complain of sex pressure

Sexual pressure from male political colleagues is a daily reality, woman MPs complained recently. They also said that ”traditional” sexual attitudes among certain male politicians added to the pressures. The abuse of political position for sex is among the many taboo issues thrown up by the rape allegations against Jacob Zuma.

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/ 25 November 2005

Wigan’s good doctor

Arjan de Zeeuw is smarter than your average Premiership footballer, as Prime Minister Tony Blair might have been aware when he named him as a favourite player a couple of weeks ago. He is enjoying himself so much that the central defender is putting his real career on hold, he tells Paul Wilson.

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/ 25 November 2005

Nightmare time

Tuesday’s was a game that had potentially disastrous ramifications for Alex Ferguson. An early departure from the Champions League would not just have wounded his pride, it might also have wreaked havoc on his chances of making it to a 20th anniversary at Manchester United.

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/ 25 November 2005

The Fairest Cape south of Chernobyl

When Sir Francis Drake hove into view of the south-western appendix of our great land, hyperbole was inevitable. No doubt ankle-deep in Elizabethan upchuck, his britches starched by pig fat and a robust bout of dysentery, his bodkin cruelly ravaged by months of salty air and now nothing more than a rusty tool dangling between his thighs, he was primed for rhetorical excess.