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/ 25 February 2008
While "oligarchs" from the era of former president Boris Yeltsin were purged by the Kremlin, a new breed of super-rich tycoons has thrived under Vladimir Putin, bringing the number of dollar billionaires in the country to more than 100. Russia now has the most billionaires in the world after the United States, which has 415. Germany is third with 60.
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/ 25 February 2008
Shortly after Australian Mark Cutifani arrived at AngloGold Ashanti, he was forced to wear a Springbok rugby jersey for two days as his colleagues celebrated the Boks’ World Cup victory. Cutifani describes the event as “an absolute tragedy”, but despite this trauma, he appears relaxed and smiling when we meet at the mining house’s head offices in the refurbished Turbine Hall in downtown Johannesburg.
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/ 25 February 2008
Fears that China might export inflation to the rest of the world were heightened this week when Beijing announced the sharpest rise in the cost of living in 11 years. With food prices rising rapidly following severe new year storms, the annual inflation rate in the fast-growing developing economy reached 7,1% last month.
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/ 25 February 2008
South African consumers who want to help prevent the next round of load-shedding by buying an energy-efficient TV will find themselves in the dark.
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/ 25 February 2008
Under a scorching summer sun, a swarm of 400 furious women engulfed the scruffy electricity office of Banda district in north India. They were all dressed identically in fluorescent pink saris. For more than a fortnight they and their families had had no electricity, plunged into darkness at dusk and stewed in sweat at dawn. But they had all been sent bills demanding payment for power they had never received.
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/ 25 February 2008
Sudan’s Abyei region is a possible trouble spot from which conflict could resume, three years after a comprehensive agreement was signed to end civil war between the north and south, the United Nations special envoy to Sudan has warned. The oil-rich region, which lies between north and south Sudan, has experienced an administrative and political vacuum after disagreements over its status.
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/ 25 February 2008
Schabir Shaik, the convicted former financial adviser to ANC president Jacob Zuma, will tell the Constitutional Court that there is no direct connection between his corrupt relationship with Zuma and tens of millions of rands’ worth of his assets. Next week Shaik and his companies will attempt to convince the court to reverse an earlier judgement by the Supreme Court of Appeal.
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/ 25 February 2008
The United States and the European Union were the midwives attending the birth of Europe’s newest country this week. Brussels now takes on the role of foster parent, attempting to raise its infant ward to adult statehood. It is a tall order, the EU’s toughest ever. Sunday’s independence declaration launches it on its most ambitious exercise in state-building.
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/ 25 February 2008
And so the preachers have hit the streets, and the school marm is ringing the bell and clicking her heels. It’s time to get in line.The clarion call sounds across the length and breadth of the land: the youth must be saved. Saved from drink, saved from disease, saved from one another – Hell, saved from themselves.
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/ 25 February 2008
The dust had hardly settled after the ANC’s great Polokwane indaba when some people began toying with the idea that the ANC would put its deputy president, Kgalema Motlanthe, up as its presidential candidate for the 2009 general election. Lies are being peddled that ANC president Jacob Zuma has been banging tables reprimanding those he perceives to be back-stabbing him, writes Malusi Gigaba.