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/ 21 December 2007

Family by numbers

A man chooses to have many wives. Each wife has her own household. They bear his children and, together, they are a large number. This has been the custom among the Nguni people of South Africa for many generations. Jacob Zuma practises it, as does King Zwelithini and other Zulu tribesmen. But many women have spoken out, saying it is demeaning to women and gives a great sense of inequality.

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/ 21 December 2007

Long-distance love

The transnational family, nourished by email, chatrooms, long-distance calls and SMSs has increasingly become a feature of migrant communities. In this virtual family the husband might be living and working in South Africa, his wife slaving away as a nurse in England and their children at school in Zimbabwe, their country of origin.

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/ 21 December 2007

Sick Gazans cry out for treatment on Israel’s doorstep

Mustafa Hillu writhes underneath blankets, the pain pulsing outward from the cancer in his right leg, and he cries out for someone to persuade Israel to let him in for treatment. If the 36-year-old father of five is not granted entry soon doctors will have to amputate his leg at the groin to prevent the cancer in his femur from spreading, according to his family and an Israeli rights group.

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/ 20 December 2007

Shake-up in ANC national executive

<a href="http://www.mg.co.za/specialreport.aspx?area=ancconference_home"><img src="http://www.mg.co.za/ContentImages/327874/livefrompolo.gif" align=left border=0></a>The African National Congress’s (ANC) new, 80-member national executive committee was announced at the end of the party’s 52nd national conference in Polokwane at midnight on Thursday evening. Topping the list with 2 845 votes (out of 3 605 votes cast) was Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.

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/ 20 December 2007

Putin, the Kremlin power struggle and the $40bn

An unprecedented battle is taking place inside the Kremlin in advance of Vladimir Putin’s departure from office, with claims that the president presides over a secret multibillion-dollar fortune. Rival clans inside the Kremlin are embroiled in a struggle for the control of assets as Putin prepares to transfer power to his hand-picked successor Dmitry Medvedev.

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/ 20 December 2007

Cuban cricket team caught out by US ban

More than a century ago, a war correspondent called Winston Churchill was dispatched to Cuba to cover the conflict with Spain. ”It may be that future years will see the island as it would be now, had England never lost it — a Cuba free and prosperous under just laws and patriotic administration, throwing open her ports to the commerce of the world, sending her ponies to Hurlingham and her cricketers to Lord’s.”

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/ 20 December 2007

Suicide attack kills 42 in Pakistan mosque

A suicide bomber killed at least 42 people in a mosque in north-west Pakistan on Friday where a former interior minister was offering Muslim Eid festival prayers with worshippers, the government said. The former minister, Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao, survived unhurt but at least 80 people were wounded in the blast.