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/ 5 November 2007
Ford is expected to draw up a shortlist of preferred bidders for Jaguar and Land Rover this month, with half a dozen companies still in the race to buy two of Britain’s most prestigious car marques. The car-maker said it hoped to reach a conclusion either by the end of the year or by early 2008.
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/ 5 November 2007
The listed property sector has rebounded strongly and is now at the levels prior to the sell-off on the back of the interest rate hike in October. Despite higher interest rates the listed property sector is up 38% on last year, confounding analysts who expected softer capital returns in the present environment, writes Maya Fisher-French.
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/ 5 November 2007
Attribute it to his yoga, but there is a sublime zen that surrounds former Mozambican president Joaquim Chissano. The only fracture in his aura appears as we stand in his hotel elevator at the end of our interview: "Well, if the West is concerned about China’s human rights record, then perhaps African countries should reconsider trading with America because of their war in Iraq and their torture of prisoners in Guantanamo," he says.
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/ 5 November 2007
While the United Nations Millennium Development Goals aim to empower women and eradicate poverty, Southern African inheritance practices are having the opposite effect — leaving widows impoverished, maligned and separated from their own children, says a recent study out of Mozambique.
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/ 5 November 2007
Multinational drug companies are targeting doctors in developing countries with dinners and lavish gifts, such as air conditioners, washing machines and down payments on cars, as incentives to prescribe their drugs, a new report revealed this week. The report from Consumers International says that self-regulation by the multinational drug giants has failed.
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/ 5 November 2007
Zimbabwe’s ruling Zanu-PF party and the opposition MDC were the "closest they have been" to reaching an agreement over key sections of a new constitution this week, but rowed over Western sanctions and presidential term limits. Officials on both sides involved in the talks, mediated by President Thabo Mbeki, report that they have agreed to a set of reforms, further to electoral changes agreed in September, which would form the basis for a new constitution by next year.
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/ 5 November 2007
A group of French charity workers arrested in Chad on child kidnapping charges went to extraordinary lengths to keep their adoption operation under wraps, it emerged. A total of 17 Europeans have been charged in connection with a bid to smuggle more than 100 children out of eastern Chad to France, where they were to have been adopted by host families.
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/ 5 November 2007
In the long shadows of early dusk, a large black Mercedes with blacked-out windows picked me up from my hotel and whisked me through Gaza City’s dusty, sullied streets. The roads, strewn with rubbish, were largely empty: Gaza was preparing for an Israeli incursion and the routine was familiar.
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/ 5 November 2007
If the people of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) save the mountain gorilla, might the gorilla return the favour? That is the hope of environmental activists, who realise that wildlife conservation and tourism could be the key to survival for people as well as animals in a part of Africa where conflict has been the norm.
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/ 5 November 2007
Short-term insurers have a gleam in their eye. The department of transport’s proposed driver’s licence demerit points system could mean big gains for the industry, should it prove successful. Heavy hitters like Outsurance, Santam and Mutual & Federal would eagerly welcome a new system that would allow them to profile their customers’ portfolio and adjust individual insurance premiums according to the demerits a client racks up.