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/ 4 April 2007

Sourcing it out

A desire to focus on core business activities, together with increasingly complex administrative issues, rising costs and a shortage of appropriate skills, is causing many companies to move in the direction of outsourcing their payroll function. Marina Nolte, national outsourcing manager at Softline VIP, says the payroll outsourcing market is growing rapidly.

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/ 4 April 2007

Clinical SA pull off comfortable win over Ireland

South Africa defied rain and a fighting Ireland to cruise to a seven-wicket win in a World Cup Super Eights match at the Guyana National Stadium in Georgetown on Tuesday. Jacques Kallis hit an unbeaten 66 and added 80 runs for an unbroken fourth wicket stand with Ashwell Prince to guide the Proteas to their second win in as many Super Eight matches.

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/ 4 April 2007

Pressuring selectively

The man in the print shop where journalists were making copies of the latest judgement in the Jacob Zuma legal marathon, probably spoke for many middle-class South Africans when he asked why Zuma is so desperate to stop investigators getting access to those documents in Mauritius.

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/ 4 April 2007

Chávez calls time on holiday booze

The trick is to look the barman in the eye and give a short, emphatic nod as you order a Coke. Discreetly the rum tumbles in and discreetly you toast the barman, your accomplice in crime. The Venezuelan President, Hugo Chávez, has banned alcohol in the week leading up to Easter Day to try to cut the number of drink-driving related accidents.

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/ 4 April 2007

Was Jesus the first socialist?

Was Jesus “the greatest socialist in history”, as Venezuelan President Hugo Chàvez recently claimed? That depends on what one means by “socialism”. And there are huge difficulties in trying to force the 1st-century Jew, Yeshua ha Nosri, into a 21st-century political mould. Universal suffrage and human rights were undreamt-of in his age.

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/ 3 April 2007

The trouble with InstaNations

I have been in the mood to set a bonfire to some of my vanities, the primary one being that Africa, or more bite-sized Kenya, my country, will ”sort itself out” soon. Sorting itself out means becoming a multicultural, culturally diverse South Korea with clean air and no sexual hang-ups.