Staff Reporter
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/ 24 May 2006

Bush urges shelving of West Bank plan

United States President George Bush urged Israel on Tuesday to resume direct talks with the Palestinian president and put on hold plans to withdraw unilaterally from the West Bank. In his first official visit to Washington, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert received little support for immediate movement on his plan to redraw Israel’s borders.

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/ 24 May 2006

Pensions: What, me worry?

While more young people are becoming increasingly concerned about making provision for their retirement, savings numbers show that they are doing very little about it. Old Mutual commissioned a retirement fund survey using a sample of 60 local retirement funds comprising a total of 92 000 active members and 33 000 pensioners.

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/ 24 May 2006

Tale of two compartments

For a gay man with little knowledge of — or if truth be told, interest in — the vagina, the recent international conference on microbicides in Cape Town represented a personal turning point. To be honest, my knowledge of the "rectal compartment" — as the arse is euphemistically referred to in scientific circles — was hardly any better.

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/ 23 May 2006

Preventing rape survivors from becoming Aids statistics

For women who are victims of rape, recovery from the violation is typically arduous and draining. When they’re unable to get treatment to prevent possible HIV infection the process is even more fraught, however — something with which Kenya is grappling. Known as post-exposure prophylaxis, the anti-HIV treatment is available in just seven of the 73 government district hospitals in Kenya.

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/ 23 May 2006

Ethics committee clears Mlambo-Ngcuka

Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka’s office welcomed the findings of Parliament’s joint committee on members’ ethics which on Tuesday cleared her of breaching the MPs’ code of conduct. The committee found that the deputy president did not breach the code as she did not intend gaining financially when establishing the Lesila Burial Society.

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/ 23 May 2006

Boks look short of pace

One thing that has become increasingly evident among the Springbok squad of 2006, assembled in Bloemfontein, is that the team looks desperately short of pace out wide. Of the initial squad of 45, only 27 went through their paces at Shimla Park on Tuesday afternoon, and of those 27, not one player was an out-and-out winger.

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/ 23 May 2006

AU wants UN forces in Darfur within two months

The African Union on Tuesday suggested that United Nations peacekeeping troops should be sent to Sudan’s Darfur region within two months to bolster a peace accord and prevent the humanitarian crisis from worsening. AU commission chairperson Alpha Oumar Konare said the accord sealed in Abuja, Nigeria ”will be credible if we can ensure the commitment becomes a reality”.

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/ 23 May 2006

Report: Limpopo wasted millions

The Limpopo department of transport squandered millions of rands on a transport convention, a report by Auditor General Shauket Fakie has found. Among the findings were that the department did not budget correctly, overstated income and understated expenditure to the value of millions of rands.