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/ 22 October 2007
Booming stock markets, bustling city centres, huge reserves of natural resources and soaring economic growth. Welcome to the new Africa. Last week one of Britain’s leading asset managers, New Star, became the first to launch a fund that will invest solely in the countries of sub-Saharan Africa outside South Africa.
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/ 22 October 2007
The Public Investment Corporation (PIC) is not afraid to throw its weight around and rattle cages. A strong champion of shareholders can be a good thing, but when does size become dangerous? The PIC is the largest fund manager in South Africa. It controls about R791-billion, almost double its closest rival, Old Mutual, which manages R396-billion of South African assets.
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/ 22 October 2007
A "genetic contraceptive" that could interfere with the make-up of women’s eggs during ovulation and which is designed to have none of the side-effects of traditional hormone-based pills is being developed by scientists. The new approach, the researchers say, should make it impossible for sperm to fertilise women’s eggs.
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/ 22 October 2007
Zimbabwe has effectively outsourced its economy to South Africa, sending workers south of the Limpopo to mop up skilled jobs and receiving $500-million a year in return. Estimates vary, but it is thought Zimbabwean migrants in South Africa number between 800 000 and three million.
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/ 22 October 2007
The stock market boom in India reached new heights on Monday with the Mumbai index shooting past 19 000 for the first time and creating paper fortunes worth billions of dollars for the country’s richest industrialists. The record high, which saw Mumbai’s Stock Exchange Sensitive index, or Sensex, rise almost 3,5% in the course of the day, was fuelled by foreign investors seeing rapid economic growth and company profits in India.
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/ 22 October 2007
Veteran Amazon pilots such as Fernando Galvao Bezerra are hard men to shock. During 20 years in aviation Bezerra (45) has ferried prostitutes and wildcat miners to remote, lawless goldmines. He has taxied wealthy loggers between ranches, and once survived when his plane plummeted out of the sky.
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/ 22 October 2007
In recent months global awareness on the risks associated with climate change has shifted drastically. Few would now dare to argue against the view that climate change presents an enormous humanitarian challenge. Even if progress in reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases is made, we should not forget that weather patterns have changed already, writes Kofi Annan.
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/ 22 October 2007
It must be dispiriting at times to be one of the local protesters in Aberdeenshire, on Scotland’s east coast, trying to stop the billionaire Donald Trump from building a $1billion golf complex along one of Scotland’s finest stretches of dunes. His visit to the site recently has reminded them — if they needed it — that they are pitted against one of the world’s most famous and famously ruthless businessmen.
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/ 22 October 2007
Women in developing countries find it easier to break through the so-called glass ceiling than their colleagues in the West, according to a global study by PricewaterhouseCoopers. The firm interviewed more than a hundred business people in eight countries, including China, India and Germany, for the report on women’s economic participation for the Women’s Forum held in Deauville, France, last week.
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/ 22 October 2007
For the better part of last year and until recently, the rand seemed to be a one-way bet relative to just about any currency in the world. Having broken R7 to the dollar in late 2003, the rand traded steadily to around R6 to the dollar by early last year. In May last year the strength started to evaporate and the rand quickly devalued to R7,80 to the dollar in the five months to October.