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/ 22 November 2007

Fighting in DRC kills 20 rebel soldiers

Fighting flared in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s powder keg east on Wednesday, as the army battled insurgent troops after killing 20 rebel soldiers who staged a pre-dawn attack. Men loyal to cashiered general Laurent Nkunda launched a raid on an army position near Rutshuru, the headquarters of an eponymous district in the troubled Nord-Kivu province.

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/ 22 November 2007

Johnson urges Lions to learn lessons from SA

Martin Johnson has urged the British and Irish Lions to be creative with their selection policy when it comes to picking a squad for the 2009 tour of South Africa. An enduring fascination is that players who have not shone or even played at all for England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales can become stars when they put on the red shirt of the Lions.

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/ 22 November 2007

NZ father convicted for smacking son

A New Zealand father has been convicted of assault for smacking his eight-year-old son on the bottom in what is believed to be the first case under a controversial new law. "One time, maybe you could have got away with this, but you can’t do that now," Judge Anthony Walsh told the 33-year-old man on Wednesday.

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/ 22 November 2007

Bar brawl

One way of looking at the alarming chasm that has opened up between South Africa’s black and white advocates is that Western Cape Judge President John Hlophe is entirely to blame. If he had stepped down quietly over the payments he received from Oasis Asset Management, the argument goes, members of the Bar in Johannesburg and Cape Town would not be at one another’s throats.

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/ 22 November 2007

More than good behaviour

”The prison social worker approached a nearby child-welfare organisation. ‘Twenty maximum-security prisoners want to adopt an Aids orphan,’ he said, steeling himself for disbelief and refusal. But the organisation, overwhelmed and underfunded, had an orphan.” Robyn Scott visits a maximum-security prison where a small miracle unfolds.

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/ 21 November 2007

When journalism needs autonomy from audiences

There’s good cause for why Rapport editor Tim du Plessis is getting flak for firing Deon Maas — a columnist whose call to tolerate satanism outraged some readers. The paper has about 300 000 buyers, but Du Plessis’s excessive reaction was in response to a number of boycott threats and, according to his paper, 450 duplicated letters of protest and 629 SMSs.