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/ 2 February 2007
There is nothing that reduces me to a howling baby more than an unlikely sporting triumph — Kelly Holmes staring at the screen unsure that she has won her first Olympic gold before yelping with joy; Manchester City coming from 2-0 down to beat Gillingham at Wembley. Serena Williams provided those of us that way inclined with another all-time weepy classic last weekend.
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/ 2 February 2007
”Sometimes I’m amazed with European clubs — they spend fortunes on ordinary players just because they’re Brazilian.” This wry observation, from Tostao, a World Cup winner and one of today’s most-respected commentators on Brazilian football, might well apply to many talent-hungry European nations, but England is not one of them.
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/ 2 February 2007
On the second afternoon of the final Test of the summer, as Pakistan softened and dribbled into the cracks like an ice-cream cake in the Sahel, a debate raged in the Newlands’ Railway Stand. The issue of the hour was the correct pronunciation of Ashwell Prince’s name, and while the poses of the rival camps were identical, their positions were diametrically opposed.
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/ 2 February 2007
Hundreds of people waving banners welcomed Chinese President Hu Jintao on his first visit to Sudan on Friday when he arrived in the capital with a large delegation amid heavy security. Thousands of Chinese expatriates live in Sudan, working on construction projects and in Sudan’s budding oil industry, and Khartoum’s main streets were lined with Sudanese and Chinese flags.
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/ 2 February 2007
A High Court application by the Financial Services Board has exposed the ”misappropriation” of hundreds of millions of client money by Cape-based asset management company Fidentia. This may prove to be one of the most damaging scandals since the failure of Masterbond in 1992, given that Fidentia was looking after R1,6-billion of other people’s money.
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/ 2 February 2007
The Shell Accountability Group, a global network of environmental groups, has called on Shell to replace, at an estimated cost of R43-billion, the Durban-based refinery that is jointly owned by it and BP through the South African Petroleum Refineries (Sapref) joint venture, Business Report said on Friday.
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/ 2 February 2007
An accurate diagnosis normally requires the doctor examining the patient and maybe tissue samples. An Irish doctor, however, has done it while watching television by spotting that a government minister had a tumour in his cheek. The unnamed surgeon from University Hospital, Galway, was at home with his doctor wife before Christmas.
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/ 2 February 2007
The United States has suffered a sharp drop in tourism since 9/11, mainly because of concerns over tighter passport and customs controls, according to the travel industry. It estimates that there has been a 17% drop in the US share of tourism, costing the country an estimated $1b-billion in lost revenue.
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/ 2 February 2007
Football fans hoping that new national coach Carlos Alberto Parreira would deliver a ”new dawn” type of speech at his first media conference since he officially took over would have left the Sandton Convention Centre disappointed. Parreira’s message to the media on Thursday was that he is a practical man.
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/ 2 February 2007
Two suicide bombers killed 61 people and wounded 150 when they blew themselves up at a crowded market in Iraq’s Shi’ite Muslim town of Hilla on Thursday, police said. The blasts, along with bomb and mortar attacks in Baghdad that killed 11 people, underscored the challenges for the government of Shi’ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.