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/ 1 September 2006
In 100 years of Springbok rugby, European royalty, presidents and other statesmen have often handled the ceremonial pleasantries before a Test match. It was only fitting on Friday that the Springboks continue this tradition. However, this time around the Boks had an audience with an African king.
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/ 1 September 2006
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan said on Friday Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had promised to enforce an arms embargo on Hezbollah under a United Nations resolution that halted Israel’s war with the Lebanese group. ”The president informed me that Syria … will help in its implementation,” Annan told reporters after talks with al-Assad in Damascus.
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/ 1 September 2006
More than 2 000 workers congregated in Beyers Naude Square in Johannesburg on Friday morning, the most recent demonstration in the month-long wage strike undertaken by contract cleaning workers around the country. Simultaneous marches were under way in towns throughout South Africa.
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/ 1 September 2006
The Department of Agriculture and Land Affairs was ”unreasonable” and, ”without good grounds”, wanted to cull birds on the farm of a breeder of exotic birds outside Pretoria, the Pretoria High Court found on Friday. An earlier court decision would have seen birds worth R2-million culled because they might have had avian flu.
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/ 1 September 2006
Former African National Congress chief whip Tony Yengeni is being pampered in Malmesbury prison, according to a Cape Town tabloid newspaper. The newspaper reported this week that Yengeni, who was sentenced to four years jail for fraud, had been moved to the prison’s hospital section so that he did not have to be with other inmates.
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/ 1 September 2006
The National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) has issued the first licence to Sasol Gas to construct gas-distribution pipelines — in Germiston’s Roodekop area — Nersa said on Friday. ”The issuing of the licence to Sasol Gas is a milestone decision for the energy regulator,” spokesperson Nhlanhla Cebekhulu said in a statement.
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/ 1 September 2006
South African President Thabo Mbeki has sprung to the defence of Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu — who recently urged that former deputy president Jacob Zuma should not become president — following what he describes as a ”truly distressing personal attack” on the archbishop by the Congress of South African Students.
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/ 1 September 2006
An Israeli military court on Thursday ordered 15 Hamas leaders, including two Cabinet ministers and the speaker of Palestine’s Parliament, to go on trial charged with membership of an outlawed organisation. The group, 12 of them elected members of the Parliament, appeared in court at Ofer Camp on the occupied West Bank.
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/ 1 September 2006
Thousands of homes in central South Africa were left without power on Friday after a marksman hit an overhead power line when taking a pot-shot at a bird sitting on the wire. A spokesperson for the Eskom power company said that two entire towns in the south-east of the central Free State province were blacked out after the incident at breakfast time.
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/ 1 September 2006
Last Thursday, Thai television stations interrupted programmes to broadcast live footage of what appeared to be the immediate aftermath of an attempt to assassinate the Prime Minister, Thaksin Shinawatra. Millions of viewers were glued to their sets watching bomb squad officers defuse a car, packed with dozens of kilograms of explosives, parked outside Thaksin’s Bangkok residence.