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/ 20 November 2007
Armed with backpacks, sleeping bags, budget travel guides and hunger for a wider world long beyond their reach, backpackers from China are likely to be heading to a youth hostel near you. Loosened travel restrictions and a booming economy mean that growing numbers of young Chinese have visas and cash to travel abroad as never before.
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/ 20 November 2007
On a moonlit beach at the Wanan islet off south-west Taiwan, a group of tourists gather patiently to watch a green turtle using her flippers to cover the eggs she has just laid in the sand. The tourists count themselves lucky as the sea turtles, an endangered species in Taiwan, come to the beaches of several offshore islands for nesting for only a few months each year.
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/ 20 November 2007
A new analysis of South Africa’s huge university dropout rate confirms some suspected causes of students not completing their studies. But it also provides surprising reasons for optimism. Finances, poor school preparation and inadequate academic teaching and support are among the leading reasons cited by students who have dropped out.
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/ 19 November 2007
In the fevered talk these days about religion and secularism, there is little room for the thing Africans like me most fear: religious or cultural rationalism. Outside of tiny labs the general ignorance about science, even among people with good educations, is very high. I remember a famous Afrikaans rugby player, a medical doctor, saying in the 1990s that science had determined that black people could not swim — something to do with muscles and heavy bones.
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/ 19 November 2007
European Union agriculture experts have recommended a ban on South African ostrich meat, but the Department of Agriculture says it has no official knowledge of this threat to the R1,2-billion export industry. ”As I speak now, I don’t have any official correspondence [from the EU],” the department’s chief communications director said on Monday.
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/ 19 November 2007
European Union governments agreed on Monday to give a ”clear and tough” message to Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe on human rights at a summit of EU and African leaders next month. The December 8 to 9 summit in Lisbon will be the first between the two continents in seven years.
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/ 19 November 2007
While he might have been part of the apartheid government’s secret chemical and biological warfare programme, he did not act unprofessionally, Wouter Basson said on Monday. Basson pleaded not guilty to six charges brought against him at the Health Professions Council of South Africa. The charges relate to his time as head of the apartheid government’s chemical and biological warfare project.
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/ 19 November 2007
Siyabonga Nqakula, the son of Minister of Safety and Security Charles Nqakula, will testify that he fell asleep at the wheel before a head-on collision, a Cape Town magistrate heard on Monday. Nqakula (27), of Johannesburg, has pleaded not guilty to charges of drunken and reckless driving.
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/ 19 November 2007
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A special meeting will be held before the African National Congress’s (ANC) 52nd annual conference in December, the party said on Monday. ”The NEC [national executive committee] agreed to hold a special meeting before the conference to further discuss issues for inclusion in the NEC’s report to conference,” ANC spokesperson Smuts Ngonyama said.