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/ 9 November 2007
When I was a teenager — a long time ago — the chess bug bit me. I had the sort of disposable time that only a teenager can have and used it to play chess for hours each day. An extension of my obsession was playing correspondence chess. I thought I was very sophisticated and swish because I was playing chess with someone in another country. All of this seems ludicrous today, writes Bruce Clark.
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/ 9 November 2007
Just four months before scheduled elections, and with a breakthrough in talks brokered by President Thabo Mbeki in sight, Zimbabweans are watching in dismay as the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) disintegrates and Zanu-PF tweaks electoral regulations in its favour. Recently, there have been violent clashes between supporters of the MDC and some of his most senior officials.
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/ 9 November 2007
Africa’s coastline is in trouble. Research shows that over the past three decades, the amount of fish in West African waters has declined by up to 50%. Pollution has also increased in the same waters, including South Africa’s west coast as more oil companies set up shop in Africa’s west coast waters. A damning report shows that sensitive wetlands (mangroves) and coastal forests have been lost forever.
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/ 9 November 2007
The Union World Conference on tuberculosis and lung health opens in Cape Town on November 9, with more than 3 000 scientists brainstorming new strategies to attack one of the most successful killers of human beings. This year the traditionally scientific and sober meeting looks set to develop a harder advocacy edge.
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/ 9 November 2007
The United States government is heading for the dock. The American Civil Liberties Union has launched legal action against it over its denial of a visa to prominent South African academic Adam Habib. And now that the US has revealed its reasons for denying Habib entry to the country, essentially accusing him of ”terrorist” activity, the backlash against the superpower’s government is intensifying.
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/ 9 November 2007
Two of the key figures in the genesis of the arms-deal scandal — Patricia de Lille and Andrew Feinstein — went public again this week, fanning the embers of a corruption storm that has been smouldering for nine years. Feinstein, the former African National Congress leader of Parliament’s public accounts watchdog Scopa, resigned when the party moved to curtail investigations into the arms deal.
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/ 9 November 2007
While the plastic bag tax has become a cash cow for government, bringing in R221-million since 2004, the company tasked with promoting the recycling of plastic bags is struggling to get off the ground. Buyisa-e-Bag, the company in question, has seen a mere R44-million of the funds generated since it became fully operational in 2005, leaving R177-million to churn around in the general fiscus.
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/ 9 November 2007
The jailed leader of a separatist movement in the south-east of Nigeria — known formerly as Biafra — was released from detention at the end of October in a move analysts hailed as a helpful and diplomatic approach by the government to the region’s problems. But the secessionist leader says he will continue his struggle for independence.
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/ 9 November 2007
President Pervez Musharraf’s ”second coup” amounted to a serious personal blow for Condoleezza Rice, the United States Secretary of State, and American counterterrorism and nation-building policies in the Pakistan-Afghanistan badlands. Whatever his other failings, the Pakistani leader is a gentleman of the English colonial school, writes Simon Tisdall.
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/ 9 November 2007
Democratic Alliance leader Helen Zille plans to sue the state for R300 000 following her arrest at an anti-drugs march earlier this year, she said on Friday. She has also lauded the ”upsurge in dissenting voices” within the African National Congress, saying it could lead to a realignment of politics.