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/ 14 July 2006

Arab leaders enter the fray

Arab foreign ministers will hold an extraordinary meeting in Cairo on Saturday to discuss the latest deadly escalation between Israel and Lebanon and the Palestinians. The meeting "will examine the serious situation in Lebanon and in Palestine, as well as the aggressions and threats made by Israel against them," the pan-Arab body said in a statement.

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/ 14 July 2006

State to flex fuel muscles?

With the competition authorities rejecting a tie-up between privately owned Sasol and Engen, owned by Malaysia’s Petronas, there are signs that the state-owned PetroSA may be getting ready to grow muscles in the domestic market. Senior PetroSA and government officials met Petronas in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, last month.

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/ 14 July 2006

The power of love

I was 14 years old when We Are the World filled our television screens — and I discovered that we are loved. That was an amazing kind of love: a giant chorus of exotic-looking people coming together as one, and they pouted and gurgled and they agreed.

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/ 14 July 2006

Beirut trapped in the middle

Hizbullah had previously threatened to capture Israeli soldiers, but it had limited its attacks to shelling across the border. Wednesday’s strike marked the Islamic militia’s biggest operation since 2000, when Israel ended its military occupation of southern Lebanon.

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/ 14 July 2006

‘Where is the world?’

Last Saturday, I had lunch with friends in London at a benefit for the medical school at the Arab University in Jerusalem. At home later, I watched the news on al-Jazeera: 12 more Palestinians killed by the Israeli army. There were sirens. There were young men bending to kiss the forehead of their fallen comrade, while his mother sat rocking and speechless.

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/ 14 July 2006

Africa interested in SA food-fortification programme

South Africa’s food-fortification programme is generating interest throughout the continent, but it is too early to determine the effect on the health of South Africans, a World Health Organisation affiliate said recently. In 2003 South Africa was one of four countries — the others are China, Morocco and Vietnam — that received a fortification grant from Gain, with South Africa’s largesse valued at ,8-million.

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/ 14 July 2006

The chill winds of Doha

Time is running out for the World Trade Organisation. Can the WTO’s weary membership go once more into the breach after its most recent failure? The consequences of failing to achieve a Doha round agreement would be severe. The multilateral trading system, while imperfect and iniquitous in parts, is worth saving, warts and all.

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/ 14 July 2006

Mumbai nightmare relived

Outside the morgue of Bhabha hospital two men embrace before wiping the tears from their faces. Inside lies the body of their friend and colleague, Tejas Shah, a 35-year-old salesperson whom they last saw boarding a train on the southern tip of Mumbai’s peninsula.

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/ 14 July 2006

Inside the mad scientist’s lab

A suspended University of Cape Town (UCT) professor, who was involved in researching an unregistered potion marketed as an “anti-HIV treatment”, was keeping highly infectious viruses in his laboratory without following correct biosafety procedures. Professor Girish Kotwal, head of UCT’s Institute of Infectious Diseases and Molecular Medicine, was suspended for six months.