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/ 4 September 2006
Recent interest-rate adjustments may have a negative impact on output in the short term but they will ensure that inflation remains within the target band over the long run, Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel said on Monday. He said this in turn will be beneficial for competitiveness and hence sustainable growth over the long run.
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/ 4 September 2006
World Cup winners Italy better finish their long lap of honour before Wednesday. Otherwise they may not make it to Euro 2008. Held 1-1 at home by Lithuania on Saturday, the lacklustre Italians play in France less than two months after the two sides met in the World Cup final.
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/ 4 September 2006
Former world featherweight boxing champion ”Prince” Naseem Hamed was released early from jail on Monday after serving only a few weeks of a 15-month sentence for dangerous driving and seriously injuring another motorist. Briton Hamed was sentenced in May after his Mercedes sports car collided head-on with another car.
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/ 4 September 2006
European Ryder Cup captain Ian Woosnam admitted Thomas Bjorn had struggled to accept his failure to make the cut for this month’s showdown with the United States. Bjorn was overlooked when Woosnam named his two wild-card choices for the contest on Sunday, giving the nod to Northern Ireland’s Darren Clarke and England’s Lee Westwood instead.
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/ 4 September 2006
Africa’s great crocodile hunter saluted his Australian counterpart on Monday, saying the death of Steve Irwin by a stingray barb was an ”unfitting” end for the fearless showman. ”I’m very upset to hear about it. I know that he led a dangerous life but it just doesn’t seem right that a fish should kill him… It is an unfitting death for him,” said Khalid Hassen.
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/ 4 September 2006
Iranian police have arrested a South African man on suspicion of drug smuggling, the semi-official Fars news agency reported on Sunday. Drug traffickers and dealers may receive a death sentence under Iranian law, depending on the kind and amount of drugs involved.
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/ 4 September 2006
South Africa had to become an advanced information-based society in which information and communication technology (ICT) tools were the drivers of economic and societal development,” President Thabo Mbeki said on Sunday. Although South Africa had a diverse and dynamic telecommunications market with world-class technology, there were still many untapped opportunities.
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/ 4 September 2006
A Japanese man was arrested after trying to steal a mannequin from a display window, claiming it was love at first sight, news reports said on Monday. Shoji Shibuzaki (33) was arrested at 3am in the southern city of Maebara for allegedly trying to remove the mannequin from display at a community centre.
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/ 4 September 2006
Rebels in Sudan’s ravaged Darfur region said that government forces backed by bombers were pursuing a week-old offensive and African Union peacekeepers reported continued fighting. The government significantly raised the stakes in Khartoum’s stand-off with the international community and called on Sunday for the AU to withdraw its troops from all of Darfur.
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/ 4 September 2006
The main factors that have recently led to the heightening of the inflationary risks, namely high levels of consumer spending, adverse movements in the exchange rate, a larger current-account deficit, higher food prices and high oil prices, serve as the backdrop to the tightening cycle in South Africa, Tito Mboweni, Governor of the South African Reserve Bank, said on the weekend.