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/ 3 February 2007

Pietersen double secures Sharks victory

Two tries by wing JP Pietersen gave the Durban Sharks a 17-3 victory over the Bulls of Pretoria in an error-strewn Super 14 match on Saturday. Pietersen scored once in each half in a game dominated by good defence and indifferent attack. The Sharks led 7-3 at halftime and the issue stayed in the balance until Pietersen wrapped up the match with five minutes remaining.

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/ 3 February 2007

FNB backs down over anti-crime campaign

First National Bank has cancelled its anti-crime initiative which was designed to encourage President Thabo Mbeki to make crime his priority, the early edition of the Sunday Times reported on Saturday evening. According to the newspaper First Rand bank chief executive Paul Harris and his executive team pulled out of the R20-million campaign at 3.30pm on Friday.

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/ 3 February 2007

Blessed, the home-grown inquisition

The Tribulation Squad had found the heckler under some dense bush, where he was trying to light a joint with a damp match, and set about stuffing a leather-upholstered cudgel into his mouth lest he utter again the demonic phrases that had brought the poor wretch to justice in the first place.

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/ 3 February 2007

Bush’s smoke and mirrors

George W Bush proposes to deal with climate change by means of smoke and mirrors. So what’s new? Only that it is no longer just a metaphor. After six years of obfuscation and denial, the US now insists that we find ways to block some of the sunlight reaching the earth. This means launching either mirrors or clouds of small particles into the atmosphere.

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/ 3 February 2007

From pan-Africanism to national purity

For a government that has hoisted its image on the African continent by the flag of pan-Africanism, the Zimbabwean government’s recent parade of its policy of essentialist nationalism may seem like a weird contradiction. Until last November, it had probably never before occurred to Trevor Ncube, that he might be a national of a country other than Zimbabwe.

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/ 3 February 2007

Downs dazzle Chiefs

It was the ultimate indignity for Kaizer Chiefs in the battle of Premier League giants at Loftus on Saturday afternoon when a Mamelodi Sundowns team — reduced to 10 men — strung together 44 passes before surrendering the ball. And despite the red carding of goal scorer Jose Torrealba in the 67th minute for a verbal offence, there was no halting the rampant, calculating Brazilians.

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/ 3 February 2007

Cosmos share points with Swallows

Jomo Cosmos shared the spoils from a 1-1 draw with a determined Moroka Swallows after playing their first home Premier League game at Witbank’s Ackerville Stadium on Saturday afternoon. A sizeable crowd from the Witbank area witnessed top-flight football in their own backyard because Ezenkosi’s regular ground is under renovation.

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/ 3 February 2007

Baghdad truck bomb kills 135

A suicide truck bomber struck a market in a predominantly Shi’ite area of Baghdad on Saturday, killing at least 135 people and wounding scores among the crowd buying food for evening meals, the most devastating strike in the capital in more than two months. The late-afternoon explosion was the latest in a series of attacks against mainly Shi’ite commercial targets in the capital.