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/ 31 October 2006
Drug smugglers unsuccessfully used courier companies to try to get heroin into South Africa twice this week, said officials on Tuesday. In the first incident, drug smugglers in Pakistan tried to use a South African High Commission official envelope to courier high-grade heroin to Johannesburg through Federal Express, said the Department of Foreign Affairs.
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/ 31 October 2006
Members of Solidarity were ”disappointed” by reports of the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) to the effect that the ANC will disregard the minority of people who question name changes, Solidarity said on Tuesday. Solidarity chairperson Ernst Roets said a report in Beeld mentioned the ”important role” of the ANCYL, which was ”to protect the country’s democracy”.
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/ 31 October 2006
Portugal on Tuesday handed over its controlling stake in one of Africa’s largest dams to former colony Mozambique after tortuous negotiations spanning more than three decades. The pact, signed by Mozambican President Armando Guebuza and Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Socrates, gives Mozambique control of an 85% stake of the Cahora Bassa dam on the Zambezi river.
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/ 31 October 2006
The South African Football Association (Safa) placed a gag at Tuesday’s media briefing on discussing the controversial issue of South Africa playing Egypt in next month’s Nelson Mandela Challenge game in London. The silence was equally deafening when Benni McCarthy’s continued absence from the Bafana Bafana squad was revealed.
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/ 31 October 2006
Negotiators scrambled on Tuesday to salvage peace talks aimed at averting all-out war between Somalia’s powerful Islamists and its weak government as the deeply divided sides both threatened to quit. In a last-ditch bid to keep the negotiations from collapsing even before they begin, international observers proposed Sudan as sole mediator.
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/ 31 October 2006
A new dispensing fee for medicine will come into effect from Wednesday, the Department of Health announced in Johannesburg on Tuesday. The new fees were set by the department’s pricing committee, ordered by the Constitutional Court last year to reconsider a fee of 26% of the single exit price, capped at R26.
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/ 31 October 2006
South Africa recorded another huge budget surplus in September of R14,8-billion and the government is therefore well on track to meet its revenue targets, with revenue collected halfway through the fiscal year at 50,1% of the budgeted target. However, a more pressing concern lies on the expenditure side.
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/ 31 October 2006
North Korea has agreed to return to talks on its nuclear programme and they could start within one month, the United States announced on Tuesday, just weeks after the regime stunned the world with an atomic test. Christopher Hill, Washington’s chief negotiator on North Korea, announced the sudden breakthrough after secret talks Tuesday in Beijing.
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/ 31 October 2006
All Black hooker Anton Oliver ensured a fiery reception for his teammates at Twickenham on Sunday when he labelled English rugby crowds arrogant, ignorant and living in the colonial past. ”Twickenham is one of the ultimate arenas,” the veteran hooker said in comments reported by the Guardian newspaper on Tuesday.
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/ 31 October 2006
Visitors to South Africa’s trendy Cape Town waterfront this summer can get iced drinks, served in glasses made of ice, while they relax on ice amid ice sculptures. The city is the latest worldwide to play host to an ”ice lounge”, which saw local organisers import 45 tons of structural ice from Canada and manufacture a further 10 tons locally for the construction.