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/ 7 November 2007
Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir said on Tuesday he was committed to the north-south peace deal that ended Africa’s longest civil war and there would be no return to hostilities after a crisis threatened the pact. ”I would like to assure you there will be no return to war whatsoever,” he said at a state banquet with South African President Thabo Mbeki.
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/ 7 November 2007
Every day that gunshots ring out in a Mogadishu neighbourhood, every week that an explosion rips homes into plumes of dust, and every month that thousands of civilians flee the capital, Somalia plunges deeper into crisis. Last week’s resignation of Ali Mohamed Gedi, the country’s Prime Minister, is the latest shake-up in a chronology of political turmoil in the Horn of Africa state.
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/ 6 November 2007
President Thabo Mbeki says the name Bafana Bafana is unfit for the national soccer team. The president seems to think the name should carry with it the notion of a formidable foe, and ”boys boys” doesn’t quite do it. Mbeki’s remarks may be valid, but they beg the question: why should the president concern himself with such matters, asks Mahmood Sanglay.
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/ 6 November 2007
The annual conference of the International Bar Association, the world’s biggest meeting of lawyers, was officially opened in Singapore recently by Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew. Yew, Singapore’s long-time ruler and a lawyer by training, was in no mind to soft-peddle his prescriptions for the island state’s success. ”If I had permitted freedom of expression,” he confidently announced, ”I would not be here tonight and neither would all of you.”
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/ 6 November 2007
A 21-year-old man was handed a life sentence by the Grahamstown High Court on Tuesday for raping and killing his sister-in-law. Judge Nambitha Dambuza, who sat with two assessors, also sentenced Themba Ngxokongxa, of Siviwe, Komga, to 20 years for rape and 15 for robbery with aggravating circumstances.
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/ 6 November 2007
Sudan has asked South Africa to mediate on Darfur, Minister of Foreign Affairs Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma said on Tuesday as attempts to end a conflict that has killed more than 200 000 and forced 2,5-million from their homes appeared to founder. Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir met President Thabo Mbeki on Tuesday.
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/ 6 November 2007
Premier Soccer League (PSL) board members deserve to be rewarded with millions of rands for their role in securing the controversial Absa soccer sponsorship deal, MPs heard on Tuesday. ”They have done the best for football … and have acted in the best interest of the PSL,” league chairperson Irvin Khoza said.
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/ 6 November 2007
African National Congress (ANC) chairperson Mosiuoa Lekota has rejected allegations by Independent Democrats leader Patricia de Lille that the ANC and the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund benefited inappropriately from the arms deal. De Lille on Tuesday said such allegations had been speculation up until now.
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/ 6 November 2007
South African medical authorities need to start thinking about tuberculosis (TB) and HIV/Aids as a single epidemic, rather than treating them separately, a TB expert said on Tuesday at a media briefing ahead of a major international conference on lung health, which begins in Cape Town on Thursday.
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/ 6 November 2007
Pakistan’s opposition grappled for a united response on Tuesday to President Pervez Musharraf’s imposition of emergency rule, leaving lawyers to protest alone for a second day and bear the brunt of a police crackdown. Ousted Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry said ”the people should rise up and restore the Constitution”.