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/ 22 February 2008
There has been intense speculation not just in financial markets, but also at the headquarters of the Treasury over Finance Minister Trevor Manuel’s political future, and the possibility that new political leadership would try to push "team finance" in a different policy direction.
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/ 22 February 2008
Japanese professor Yoji Kimura believes laughter is a weapon that in healthy doses can end the world’s wars. The only problem is finding a way to measure it. And so the expert on communications has invented a machine to chart out laughter — and a new unit of "aH" to calculate it.
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/ 22 February 2008
A Venezuelan passenger plane with 46 people aboard went missing and likely crashed in a remote mountain region soon after taking off from an Andean city just before dusk on Thursday. Villagers reported hearing a huge noise they thought could be a crash after the twin-engine plane flew out of the high-altitude city of Merida headed for the capital Caracas.
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/ 22 February 2008
Serb rioters enraged by Kosovo’s secession stormed the United States embassy in Belgrade and set it on fire, leaving one person dead and drawing swift condemnation from Washington and the United Nations Security Council. The US State Department said the lack of protection for its mission was intolerable and demanded the Security Council respond.
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/ 22 February 2008
African National Congress president Jacob Zuma is to deliver an off-the-record address at the inaugural imbizo of a forum exclusively for black journalists in Sandton on Friday. Chairperson Abbey Makoe said the Forum of Black Journalists was an association ”who would politically in the South African context be defined as of African descent, coloureds and Indians”.
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/ 22 February 2008
Despite the Scorpions’ imminent incorporation into the South African Police Service, the 2008/09 budget of the Justice and Constitutional Development Department makes provision for spending R429-million on the crime fighting unit this year. That is 15% more than last year’s budget of R373-million.
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/ 22 February 2008
The controversial consulting company embroiled in an alleged 2010 stadium tender irregularity in Nespruit now faces a strike by its sub-contractors. The sub-contractors working on the construction of the 2010 Mbombela stadium in Nelspruit have threatened to strike next week because they haven’t been paid R9-million due to them.
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/ 22 February 2008
President Robert Mugabe on Thursday compared ex-finance minister Simba Makoni to a ”prostitute” and said he was surprised by Makoni’s decision to challenge him in March presidential elections. In his first reaction to Makoni’s announcement to stand for the presidency in polls on March 29, Mugabe said his decision was ”absolutely disgraceful”.
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/ 22 February 2008
Tamil Tiger rebels said Sri Lankan government fighter jets killed five civilians in an air raid on their northern stronghold on Friday. Fighting between the military and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam has intensified since the government formally pulled out of a six-year-old ceasefire pact in January.
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/ 22 February 2008
Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton talked each other to a stalemate on Thursday night in what the Clinton campaign had hoped would offer a decisive breakthrough for her ailing campaign. On issues ranging from the economy to the war to immigration the two demonstrated the closeness of their positions rather than any grand differences of policy.