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/ 13 November 2006

Iranians outraged as Google redraws map

Google has provoked the wrath of Iran’s notoriously suspicious authorities by appearing to question the country’s sovereignty over the province of Azerbaijan in an entry on its Google Video website. In a move tailor-made to wound Iranian patriotic pride and arouse a blizzard of protest, the Azeri provincial capital, Tabriz, is located ”in southern Azerbaijan, currently in the territory of Iran”.

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/ 13 November 2006

Eco-nasties

We may be at a green tipping point — but not everyone’s got the memo yet. The following products are so ungreen that they deserve the title "eco-nasties". Air "freshener" is a stupid idea, and this one, called "Baby after bath", smells like a box of perfumed nappy sacks. But let’s not worry about the perfume, even though, according to the label, it "may cause long-term adverse effects in the aquatic environment".

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/ 13 November 2006

A bad week for fascists

Of course the word going around when the death of former president PW Botha was announced was: “How could they tell anyway?” The invincible old crocodile had been lounging around at his place in the Wilderness virtually unseen by human eyes, except for his youngish new wife, who popped up from time to time to say that he was not only fit and well but had healthy sexual appetites to boot. She was around to prove it.

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/ 13 November 2006

From kwaito to slow music

I’m late. Very late. The taxi drivers are on strike and blockading the M1. I’ve been granted a coveted interview with Reserve Bank Governor Tito Mboweni. He is stickler for time and I’m getting ready for a tongue-lashing. But the gods are smiling on me and Mboweni is sympathetic with me and mad at the taxis instead. The authorities, he says, should not allow taxi drivers to hold the country to ransom.

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/ 13 November 2006

The dangerous lives of international aid workers

The United Nations says that international aid work is one of the world’s most hazardous professions, in which humanitarian workers are constantly threatened with — or victims of — kidnappings, harassment, detention and deadly violence. A UN study points out that hundreds of aid workers and UN humanitarian personnel continue to face risks in some of the world’s major trouble spots

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/ 13 November 2006

The crook, the court and the political ambitions of Jacob Zuma

This week, a man described by the trial judge as ambitious, far-sighted and brazen — if not positively aggressive — in pursuit of his financial interests found that our legal system may grind slowly, but it sure grinds finely. The Supreme Court of Appeal handed down a judgement that in its fine attention to detail exposed Schabir Shaik, not only as a ruthless crook, but also as the person who may have destroyed the political ambitions of Jacob Zuma.