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/ 12 January 2007
Shadreck Muponda counts the crumpled notes from his pocket as he tries to work out how to stretch his Z$60 000 monthly salary to meet all expenses for the month. He needs Z$28 000 for bus fare to and from work and Z$30 000 for the two rooms he rents in Harare’s working-class suburb of Kuwadzana.
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/ 12 January 2007
South Africa’s exchange, the JSE, reported on Friday that it anticipated its consolidated earnings and headline earnings per share for the year ended December 31 2006, to be "marginally higher than the previous reporting period". The JSE highlighted that the earnings for the period had been impacted by a number of events, notably robust world equities market performance.
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/ 12 January 2007
Pity the new Australian Open tournament director, Craig Tiley. With less than a week to go before the first Grand Slam of the year gets under way, Tiley had his first taste of the annual rush of injury scares and sick notes that threatens to undermine the tournament before a ball has been struck.
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/ 12 January 2007
Typically changeable Cape Town weather, the pragmatists would have said as the skies opened over Newlands last week, forcing the final Test against India into a gripping if soggy final act. There’s always one rainy day around New Year, the veterans would have pointed out. Nothing out of the ordinary.
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/ 12 January 2007
While the transfer market is in full swing and some big names are already in action on the field in this preposterously crowded season, there is no doubt that the most important news item of the new year is the appointment by the South African Rugby Union of an MD.
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/ 12 January 2007
Last week’s Mail & Guardian reported on the phenomenon of contract killings commissioned — if that’s the word — by relatives of the victims. Similar articles appeared in other newspapers, sparked by the arrest of Mulalo Sivhidzo in connection with the murder of her husband, Avhatakali Netshisaulu, the son of City Press editor Mathatha Tsedu.
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/ 12 January 2007
When the 2006/07 season began, none could have predicted that midway through the season a small side like Silver Stars would be leading the log. The high-flying ”Tycoons” — an ironic nickname for a side run on a shoestring budget — have done exactly that and, even better, clinched the inaugural Telkom Knockout Cup in December.
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/ 12 January 2007
No one on the continent has responded so far to the call for 8 000 African peacekeepers for Somalia, perhaps because it looks like it will be some time before there’s enough peace to keep. Nigeria, South Africa, Senegal, Benin and Ghana, among the other nations on whom hopes were pinned, have been reticent on the matter.
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/ 12 January 2007
They had already been dubbed ”diabolical maniacs” by the Indian media and written off as too hot to handle by many lawyers, even before they were charged. So hardly anyone objected when wealthy businessman Moninder Singh Pandher and his servant Surender Koli were injected with a controversial ”truth serum” this week by police investigating the gruesome murder of at least 17 children and women.
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/ 12 January 2007
An explosion ripped through the United States embassy compound in central Athens on Friday but no one was hurt, a US embassy spokesperson said. Greek anti-terrorist officers were on the scene and investigating. It was not clear what caused the blast.