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/ 21 February 2007
A former law student on Wednesday told the Pretoria High Court how he had bludgeoned his friend with a dumbbell before slicing off his private parts because of his unwelcome sexual advances. Frank Lebogang Mahlakoana (24) said that he found it so shocking and horrifying that he could not even look at photos of the murder scene, as it frightened him.
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/ 21 February 2007
With the country under martial law and in the grip of a general strike, Guinea’s union leaders held new talks on Wednesday with President Lansana Conte’s government on how to end weeks of unrest that have left scores dead. At least 113 people have been killed since the protests started in January.
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/ 21 February 2007
To tax lobola, or not to tax: that is the question that Finance Minister Trevor Manuel does not want to touch with a barge pole. He told MPs in his budget speech on Wednesday that last year he received a suggestion he should make lobola, the traditional payment for a bride, tax deductible.
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/ 21 February 2007
A senior advocate was specially drafted on Wednesday to cross-examine a youth who accused his former legal representative of trying to bribe him not to testify in the Cape High Court murder trial of Dina Rodrigues. The teenager claimed last week that his former counsel, Charles Simon, had offered him a R20Â 000 bribe to remain silent.
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/ 21 February 2007
South Africa and Russia will cooperate in the fields of exploration of outer space and trade, Foreign Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma said on Wednesday. Dlamini-Zuma is hosting Russian Minister of Natural Resources Yuri Petrovich Trutnev for the sixth session of the South Africa-Russia Joint Intergovernmental Committee on Trade and Economic Operations.
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/ 21 February 2007
Former England captain David Beckham insisted on Wednesday that he is still hopeful of playing for his country despite his move to Los Angeles Galaxy this summer. Beckham was dropped by new manager Steve McLaren following last year’s World Cup and has so far not been used during the Euro 2008 qualifying campaign.
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/ 21 February 2007
Finance Minister Trevor Manuel’s 2007 budget was ”largely neutral” from a property perspective, Jawitz Properties commented on Wednesday. Meanwhile, the extra money budgeted for the Health Department means better salaries for health workers — particularly nurses, it said on Wednesday after Manuel’s Budget speech.
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/ 21 February 2007
Iran vowed on Wednesday to press on with its nuclear-fuel programme, ignoring a United Nations deadline to freeze uranium enrichment or face broader sanctions, but offered to guarantee it would not try to develop atomic weapons. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad remained defiant as a 60-day grace period Iran had been given was expiring.
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/ 21 February 2007
A day after the United Nations endorsed an African Union peacekeeping force for Somalia, and almost two months after the ouster of the Islamists from Mogadishu, analysts on Wednesday warned of spiralling chaos. At least 12 died and thousands fled the coastal capital, Mogadishu, this week after fierce fighting.
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/ 21 February 2007
Bombers and gunmen launched bloody attacks in several Iraqi cities on Wednesday, killing more than 20 people on the day Britain and Denmark announced they would begin withdrawing their troops. In the worst assault, a suicide car bomber struck in the Shi’ite holy city of Najaf, detonating explosives as a police patrol stopped him from entering the old city home to the revered Imam Ali Mausoleum.