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/ 10 October 2006
Delegates at Free State public hearings on initiation schools on Tuesday called for special courts to be established to deal with transgressors of initiation customs. The call was made in a joint statement by the South African Human Rights Commission, the National House of Traditional Leaders and the Commission for the rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities.
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/ 10 October 2006
The Congress of South African Trade Unions’ (Cosatu) involvement in the new national lottery operator, Gidani, has come under fire from Independent Democrats (ID) chief whip Avril Harding in Parliament. In a member’s statement to the National Assembly, Harding said despite its strong objections to the lottery, Cosatu has emerged as one of the major shareholders in Gidani.
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/ 10 October 2006
Armed youths on Tuesday seized a Shell flow station and took 60 workers hostage in Nigeria’s restive Niger Delta, the company said. "After firing some warning shots, the attackers took hold of the security post where they are holding about 60 SPDC [Shell Petroleum Development Company] and contractor staff," Shell said in a statement.
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/ 10 October 2006
Liberia’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was on Tuesday to start recording evidence on war-time atrocities committed over more than two decades of successive conflicts, its chairperson said. ”We will open our offices today [Tuesday] all over Liberia, and our workers will receive statements from the public,” Jerome Verdier, TRC head, said. Several hundred people have been trained to document evidence from both victims and perpetrators.
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/ 10 October 2006
A one-year-old baby girl was killed and seven people were wounded in a shoot-out during a cash-in-transit heist in the Johannesburg city centre on Tuesday, police said. Superintendent Mary Martins-Engelbrecht, speaking from the scene, said two coin security guards had just collected money when they were approached by between six and eight men.
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/ 10 October 2006
The Western Cape, already boasting some success in bringing down crime, hopes to better the crime-busting feats of New York mayor Rudi Giuliani. A five-year 40% drop in crime by 2008 ”is a target that can be achievable”, provincial police commissioner Mzandile Petros said in Cape Town on Tuesday.
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/ 10 October 2006
South Africa batsman Herschelle Gibbs was scheduled to fly to New Delhi on Tuesday, hoping to put the Hansie Cronje match-fixing scandal behind him once and for all. Gibbs, accompanied by his lawyer, will meet police commissioner KK Paul to answer a series of questions about the match-fixing affair, which was unearthed in India in 2000.
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/ 10 October 2006
An 80-year-old German motorist obediently following his navigation system ignored a motorway ”closed for construction” sign and crashed his Mercedes into a pile of sand further down the road. ”The driver was following the orders from his navigation system and even though there was a sufficient number of warnings and barricades, he continued his journey into the construction site,” a police spokesperson told Reuters.
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/ 10 October 2006
Zimbabwe’s annual inflation eased in September but remained the world’s highest as the Southern African nation grapples with a severe economic crisis critics blame on President Robert Mugabe’s government. Zimbabwe’s soaring inflation is seen as a major stumbling block to pulling the country out of an eight-year recession marked by a jobless rate above 70%.
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/ 10 October 2006
The Federation of Unions of South Africa called on Tuesday for solidarity with Zimbabwean workers after the viewing of a DVD that showed police beating trade union leaders last month. Members of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions were arrested and beaten after an attempted protest march in Harare.