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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
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.
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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
A political storm over corruption allegations in Tanzania could compel President Jakaya Kikwete to sack Prime Minister Edward Lowassa — and is already damaging the country’s standing with international donors. Tanzanian press reports in the past two months have linked Lowassa to a major financial fraud that precipitated 10 months of power-rationing last year.
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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
A KwaZulu-Natal golf course is offering a R5 000 reward leading to the arrest of the culprits who stole grass from the club’s 15th green, a news report said. Confirming the theft, Empangeni Golf Club greenkeeper Andre Rautenbach said that the grass had been dug out from the putting green on the 15th hole.
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/ 22 October 2007
Niren Tolsi’s report about President Thabo Mbeki’s recent KwaZulu-Natal imbizo (Mbeki’s day out, October 12) reminds one of Chinua Achebe’s 1977 comment on Marco Polo’s 13th-century forays to the Far East: ”Travellers with closed minds can tell us little except about themselves,” writes Mukoni Ratshitanga.
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/ 22 October 2007
President Hu Jintao on Tuesday spoke like Harold Macmillan, the British prime minister of the 1950s, who famously told his people that they had never had it so good. Under Hu’s leadership in the past five years, he said, ”China’s overall strength grew considerably and people enjoyed more tangible benefits. China’s international standing and influence rose notably.”