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/ 9 November 2006

Public Protector rules on breaches

The Public Protector has found that a failure by the Social Development Minister, Zola Skweyiya, to disclose an interest-free loan granted by Imvume chief executive officer Sandi Majali to his wife constituted a breach of the executive ethics code but his wife’s acceptance of the loan by itself did not.

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/ 9 November 2006

Skilled foreigners tied up in red tape

A number of South African firms refuse to employ skilled foreigners because of nightmarish immigration bureaucracy, say recruiting agents and immigration experts. This despite an immigration law that the department of home affairs amended last week to help firms combat the domestic skills shortage by employing skilled foreigners.

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/ 9 November 2006

Kyoto: 2012 and beyond

South Africa is expected to play a significant role at the United Nations conference in Nairobi during the next two weeks in charting a future for reducing climate change. About 6 000 delegates at the Nairobi talks will discuss ways of extending the Kyoto Protocol beyond its 2012 deadline, as well as looking for ways to help developing countries adapt to climate change.

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/ 9 November 2006

New book spooks Leon

Tony Leon has threatened to launch a libel lawsuit against a British historian who raised questions about his proximity to the apartheid intelligence establishment during his time as a conscript in the defence force. James Sanders, a London-based researcher, has sent Leon draft pages of his forthcoming book, <i>Apartheid’s Friends: The Rise and Fall of South Africa’s Secret Service</i>.

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/ 9 November 2006

A road map for the case against Zuma

"I can’t believe it," Shabir Shaik reportedly exclaimed after the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) dismissed his petition against conviction on two counts of corruption and one of fraud. "Boom, boom, boom; one, two, three: they didn’t uphold anything. All the lawyers were wrong about what was going to happen."

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/ 9 November 2006

Terror and trauma caught on film

A man wrestles a woman to the ground along Selby Street in downtown Johannesburg. He picks her up like a screaming baby, carries her behind a pillar and rapes her. On the sixth floor of the Carlton Centre, a team of ”incident analysts” sits before a bank of screens, following the events as they unfold.

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/ 9 November 2006

Wave of bombings rocks Baghdad

A series of concerted bombings ripped through Baghdad markets on Thursday as attacks across Iraq killed at least 27 people and left little doubt that a brief respite in the violence earlier in the week was over. Overnight at least a dozen mortar shells crashed down on Sunni neighbourhoods in the capital.