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/ 29 October 2007
While the government continues to point fingers at the telecoms sector crying foul about excessive pricing, perhaps it needs to hold up the mirror to itself as the single biggest shareholder in the sector. With a 37% shareholding in Telkom, the government is by far the biggest investor in South Africa’s ICT sector.
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/ 29 October 2007
Multinational Holcim, based in Switzerland, brought about one of the bigger black economic empowerment (BEE) deals last year by selling its stake in Holcim South Africa down to 8% from 54% for about R7,4-billion. Somehow the factual question of whether BEE had spurred the disinvestment became a political issue.
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/ 29 October 2007
Turkey’s move towards a full-scale invasion of northern Iraq looks more like a crab’s walk than a charging bull. The ruling party of moderate Islamists has many foes to target, and not just the guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, the ostensible enemy, argues Jonathan Steele.
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/ 29 October 2007
Last week, another armed group in the increasingly volatile eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) ignored a government deadline to disarm, increasing to three the number of illegal groups the Congolese army is chasing in that region.
At the same time, a Human Rights Watch report detailed the atrocities that threaten civilians living in this region.
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/ 28 October 2007
A 45-year-old skydiver was killed in Carletonville on Sunday when a landing manoeuvre went wrong, the Johannesburg Skydiving Club said. Spokesperson Mark Bellingan said Eric Stephenson died of multiple trauma injuries at the club. Stephenson started skydiving more than 22 years ago and had completed more than 5 300 skydives.
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/ 28 October 2007
An official of the Vietnamese embassy to South Africa was shot and seriously injured in a robbery at his Pretoria residence at the weekend, police said on Sunday. The man, believed to be in his late forties, was shot in the stomach in a scuffle with one of five intruders who surprised the official, his wife and two children at home on Saturday evening.
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/ 28 October 2007
A head-on crash at night between two buses killed 23 people and injured 36 others in Cameroon, state radio reported on Sunday. A third bus crushed two people on a motorcycle and plunged into a ditch after swerving to avoid the collision, which happened on Saturday evening about 70km north of the Central African country’s commercial capital, Douala.
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/ 28 October 2007
Thousands of fans of South Africa’s internationally acclaimed reggae star Lucky Dube paid their final respects at a funeral service on Sunday as they mourned his murder. The service in Newcastle in KwaZulu-Natal was attended by Rastafarians and other fans from as far afield as Rwanda, Liberia and the United States.
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/ 28 October 2007
Benazir Bhutto visited a family whose son was killed in the suicide blasts that targeted the former Pakistan premier’s homecoming, as she kept up a tightly secured trip on Sunday to her ancestral home. Bhutto made a jubilant return to her family district in rural southern Pakistan on Saturday.
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/ 28 October 2007
A federal grand jury is investigating allegations that magician David Copperfield raped and threatened a Washington state woman at his estate in the Bahamas, a newspaper reported. The Seattle Times reported on Saturday that at least three federal law-enforcement officials, whom the paper did not identify, confirmed the grand jury investigation.