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/ 19 February 2007
Italian police have impounded an entire neighbourhood built illegally on the outskirts of Naples, part of an operation magistrates hope will uproot the mafia wealth hidden behind the day-to-day mob shootings that plague the city. In three raids this month, police sealed off with crime-scene tape 50 new buildings containing more than 300 flats.
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/ 19 February 2007
Financial publications are investing heavily on the internet as their audiences turn to the web for up-to-date information. But are business sites really giving print a run for its money? Fienie Grobler reports.
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/ 19 February 2007
Four years after the conflict in Sudan’s Darfur region started, the search for peace continues. As government planes bombed two more villages, envoys from the United Nations and the African Union arrived in the capital Khartoum. Their task is a difficult one — to try and reduce the level of violence and start a new dialogue between Khartoum and Darfur’s rebel movements.
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/ 19 February 2007
The people of the kingdom of Lesotho will go to the polls on Saturday to elect a new national assembly of 120 members after Head of state King Letsie III surprised the nation when he announced that the date of election would be brought forward to February from May this year.
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/ 19 February 2007
The South African nuclear community has taken the government’s recent support for nuclear energy as a cue to plan local uranium enrichment. Processing uranium will secure South Africa’s nuclear fuel supply in the event that the domestic nuclear energy market grows. Experts highlight the soaring price of uranium internationally and project a supply shortage as incentives to process uranium locally.
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/ 19 February 2007
The parents of 24 000 children in northern Pakistan refused to allow health workers to administer polio vaccinations last month, mostly due to rumours that the harmless vaccine was an American plot to sterilise innocent Muslim children. The disinformation has caused a sharp jump in polio cases in Pakistan
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/ 19 February 2007
The British and Kenyan governments weighed into the growing debate over "food miles" this week, insisting it was ethically and environmentally sound to buy flowers from Kenya on Valentine’s Day. There is increasing concern at the amount of carbon emitted by the fleets of aircraft that carry millions of flowers to Europe every day from the East African nation.
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/ 19 February 2007
The roadblock was unexpected. Driving to Colombo along Sri Lanka’s south-west coast, we were forced on to a side street by police in Hikkaduwa, one of the island’s main tourist centres. There must have been a multiple crash, we assumed, as the detour along narrow village lanes took us past rice paddies shimmering in the afternoon sun, writes Jonathan Steele.
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/ 19 February 2007
Despite a court ruling allowing Old Mutual to pay out only R2-million in terms of its surplus apportionment scheme, last week the company announced it would pay out the full R82-million as per letters sent to former pension-fund members in September last year.
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/ 19 February 2007
The snapping up of a controlling stake in India’s fourth-largest mobile phone operator, Hutchison Essar (Hutch), is being seen as transformational for Vodafone — and a major coup for its chief executive, Arun Sarin, less than a year after a shareholder rebellion over uncertainty aaout the group’s direction.