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/ 25 January 2008
Eskom’s ”poor communication” during the current electricity crisis is of major concern to the tourism industry, the City of Cape Town said on Friday. Simon Grindrod, the city’s mayoral committee member for economic development and tourism, said the tourism industry found it difficult to cope with the power cuts because Eskom was not providing accurate information.
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/ 25 January 2008
Two prisoners died in nine-hour hostage drama at the Witbank Magistrate’s Court on Thursday. The Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (Popcru) condemned the ”tragic” incident in which a police orderly was overpowered and disarmed by four prisoners.
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/ 25 January 2008
Results of a postmortem examination carried out on the actor Heath Ledger were inconclusive and it could take two weeks for a cause of death to be determined. Ledger (28) the star of Brokeback Mountain, was found dead in a New York apartment on Tuesday afternoon.
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/ 25 January 2008
Boeremag accused Kobus Pretorius was a changed man after ”meeting Christ” while being held in jail, the Pretoria High Court heard on Friday. Counsel for Pretorius, Annelie Van der Walt, argued before Judge Khami Makhafola that Pretorius should be released on bail so that he could become involved in church and school activities.
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/ 25 January 2008
If, back in the 1990s, the government had chosen to spend billions of rands on new power stations instead of armaments, South Africa would not now be facing an electricity crisis, Democratic Alliance leader Helen Zille said on Friday. ”It chose to spend billions of rands on arms that we do not need,” she said.
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/ 25 January 2008
High-profile criminal cases involving senior South African officials have renewed fears among opposition parties and the legal community that judicial independence may be at risk. President Thabo Mbeki’s government has had a testy relationship with the judiciary.
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/ 25 January 2008
Islamist insurgents briefly seized control of Somalia’s biggest military airfield on Friday and looted weapons, witnesses and an Islamist commander said. Muktar Ali Robow, leader of the al-Shabab rebel militia, told a local radio station his forces also captured government troops during the raid on Baledogle, about 100km west of the capital, Mogadishu.
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/ 25 January 2008
Most private hospital groups will maintain their tariff increases at the consumer inflation rate, Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang said on Friday. She said the Department of Health had met with several private hospital groups over the past week, who had committed to review their tariff increases.
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/ 25 January 2008
The realisation of promises by the government of Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe of a record crop yield during this summer’s farming season will not be met, the country’s agriculture minister admitted on Friday. In October, the government declared that the summer would result in ”the mother of all agricultural seasons”.
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/ 25 January 2008
South Africa’s white community should publicly express their concern and outrage at the murder of black people in Swartruggens, the South African Institute of Race Relations said on Friday. The organisation cautioned that the impression should not be made that the broader white community sympathised with the gunman.