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/ 25 February 2008
A ”significant” number of children drop out of the schooling system after grade nine, Education Minister Naledi Pandor said in Cape Town on Monday. ”South Africa is doing very well with respect to enrolment of children up to grade nine, but a significant number drop out at that point,” she told journalists during a Council of Education Ministers meeting.
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/ 25 February 2008
Finance Minister Trevor Manuel should have considered asking for an apology rather than a gagging order against arms-deal activist Terry Crawford-Browne, the Cape High Court was told on Monday. Manuel is seeking an urgent interim order to stop Crawford-Browne from continuing to publicly accuse him of criminal conduct in signing loan agreements for the deal.
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/ 25 February 2008
Service delivery has collapsed in Zimbabwe’s second largest city, Bulawayo, after local authorities recently announced that the municipality was insolvent and unable to cater to the needs of its almost two million residents. The council could not pay salaries in January and employees have been on a go-slow since then.
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/ 25 February 2008
Three committees — dealing with maternal mortality, perinatal mortality and infant mortality — were launched at Emperors Palace in Kempton Park on Monday by Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang. ”The improvement of the health of women and children has always been a priority in the healthcare planning of our democratic government,” she said.
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/ 25 February 2008
Trade union Solidarity on Monday began to publish a series of national advertisements announcing the death of affirmative action. Deputy general secretary Dirk Hermann said the advertisements would appear in the classified sections of Beeld, Business Day, Citizen and in Volksblad on Tuesday.
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/ 25 February 2008
Yusuf Abramjee, Primedia Broadcasting group’s head of news and talk programming, and Talk Radio 702/567 host Kieno Kammies on Monday laid a formal complaint of discrimination with the South African Human Rights Commission over the inaugural meeting of the Forum of Black Journalists.
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/ 25 February 2008
The Democratic Alliance (DA) has called on President Thabo Mbeki to make public the full report of the Khampepe Commission. ”I have today [Monday] submitted a request to the Presidency to make the full Khampepe Commission Report public in terms of the Promotion of Access to Information Act,” DA leader Helen Zille said in a statement.
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/ 25 February 2008
Police found 34 petrol bombs in the Precinct Six area of the N2 Gateway housing project in Delft outside Cape Town, Western Cape police said on Monday. ”Delft police were patrolling Precinct Six on Sunday and they found three plastic crates in a hole covered with a door,” spokesperson Superintendent Billy Jones said.
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/ 25 February 2008
Turkish fighter jets pounded Kurdish rebel positions for the fifth day running on Monday in the mountainous Hakurk region of northern Iraq, security sources said. Members of the Kurdish security force in the autonomous north of Iraq said the raids, which began at about 10pm local time on Sunday, continued overnight in and around Hakurk.
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/ 25 February 2008
South Africa is to cull elephants for the first time since 1995, lifting a moratorium on the practice to bring ballooning populations under control, the government said on Monday. Since the government introduced a moratorium on culling in 1995, the number of elephants has risen from about 8 000 to over 20 000.