Staff Reporter
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/ 14 March 2008

Charm offensive without charm

For two months Zuma has addressed the business world, Afrikaners, the Jewish community and farmers, as well as granting interviews to the international media, in an attempt to articulate what he stands for. Other African National Congress leaders must be appalled by his repeated bouts of foot-in-mouth disease.

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/ 14 March 2008

Fear hits bottom line

While most of the country’s challenges — political uncertainty, a downturn in the economy and power failures — are manageable, crime has emerged as the one factor which consumers and businesses feel powerless to tackle. Anecdotal evidence suggests that violent house robberies are increasing.

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/ 14 March 2008

HIV/Aids barometer: March 2008

A study conducted in Uganda and published this month in the <i>Lancet</i> has found that home-based ARV therapy provided by trained lay counsellors could be the best option for HIV-infected people living in remote, rural areas. Mortality dropped more than 90% among HIV-positive participants and their families receiving home-based care.

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/ 14 March 2008

Bully for you

Even after the turbulence he encountered last week, Barack Obama still seems the probable Democratic nominee for one simple reason. By June 8, all 54 primaries and caucuses will be completed. And on that morning Obama will, unless something really weird happens, be ahead of Hillary Clinton in the count of pledged delegates.

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/ 13 March 2008

Mind-boggling rise in grain cost

The rise in production cost of grains such as wheat and maize was ”mind boggling”, Grain SA said on Thursday. The latest cost budgets for the production of wheat due to be planted in the coming months indicate that the variable cost component increased on average by 63%,” said Grain SA chairperson Neels Ferreira.