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/ 25 February 2008
The week-long set of Cabinet briefings in February provide a snapshot of the state of government and of the styles and strengths of ministers. An energy crisis is gripping the country and at its heart is the problem that bedevils both economic growth and effective delivery: a dearth of skills
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/ 25 February 2008
A workshop held recently in Johannesburg encouraged delegates to share their experiences in the struggle to eradicate poverty in Africa. Jointly hosted by the Khanya-Africa Institute for Community-Driven Development and the European Union’s Conference Workshop Cultural Initiative, the workshop focused on a regional project to explore the potential of various techniques to make the struggle against poverty more effective.
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/ 25 February 2008
United States President George W Bush left Africa on Wednesday at the end of a five-nation tour of the continent that took in Benin, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ghana and Liberia. The focus of Bush’s visit, as he approaches the end of his second and final term in the White House, was humanitarian success stories.
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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.
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/ 25 February 2008
Cuba’s national assembly named Raúl Castro as head of state on Sunday night, formally ending 49 years of Fidel Castro’s dominance. The 614-member body accepted the 76-year-old defence minister and constitutionally designated successor as the candidate to take over from his elder brother.