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/ 24 March 2006

Murali given a car for taking 1 000 wickets

The Sri Lankan cricket board on Friday gave ace off-spinner Muttiah Muralitharan a car for becoming the first bowler to claim 1 000 wickets in international cricket. A host of dignitaries, past and present Sri Lankan players and the entire Pakistan team attended a function organised by Sri Lanka Cricket on Thursday to honour the prolific bowler.

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/ 24 March 2006

Australia failing Aborigines on education, says survey

Australia has failed to make any significant progress over the past 30 years on improving the education of Aboriginal people, by far the country’s most disadvantaged group, according to a survey released on Friday. The survey of about 2 500 students in Western Australia state found that Aboriginal students started school at a disadvantage to non-Aboriginal children and the gap only widened during their years in the classroom.

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/ 24 March 2006

Security guards gather for day two of strike

Police were keeping an eye on striking private security guards in the Johannesburg city centre on Friday. About 100 guards had gathered at Beyers Naude Square by 9am, police said. In other centres, striking security workers were also expected to march in support of their demands for better wages and working conditions.

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/ 24 March 2006

Tests within a Test to wrap West Indies, NZ series

The West Indies are hoping for a massive reversal of fortunes in the final Test against New Zealand in Napier on Saturday while the hosts are looking to pull off a clean sweep in preparation for their expected tough tour of South Africa. Despite their 10-wicket loss in the second Test in Wellington being the West Indies’ eighth successive defeat, coach Bennett King claimed his team’s spirits were still intact.

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/ 24 March 2006

Now the speaker joins the jet set

The private jet set has a new member. Baleka Mbete, the Speaker of Parliament, in January travelled to Monrovia in Liberia on a chartered flight with a price tag of R471 900. The trip, which was not publicly announced, took place amid a storm of controversy over Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka’s use of an airforce Falcon for a holiday in Dubai.

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/ 24 March 2006

Game designer proclaims industry ‘brain dead’

The electronic game industry is dead, veteran computer software designers lamented in the heart of Silicon Valley on Thursday. Chris Crawford, whose experience creating electronic games dated back to when he went to work for Atari in 1979, sounded a death knell for the industry during a gripe session at the Game Developers Conference in San Jose.

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/ 24 March 2006

Nearly 60% of liquor found in Chinese cities is fake

Nearly 60% of "foreign-brand" liquor found in four major Chinese cities is fake, according to a random check carried out by the State Administration for Industry and Commerce. The administration inspected 40 bottles, mostly cognac and whisky, in 19 retail outlets and found 23 with Hennessy, Remy Martin, Martell and certain Scotch whisky labels were fake.

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/ 24 March 2006

Ruud Gullit seeks top SA soccer job

The 17-year-old who has applied for the post of Bafana Bafana boss is surely just mocking the South African Football Association (Safa), but his name appears alongside some big names in world football on Safa’s list of 43 formal applicants. Ruud Gullit, the former Dutch international who won the FA Cup with Chelsea in 1997, had informal talks with Safa a few years ago and has always shown interest in this highly desirable but controversial position.

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/ 24 March 2006

Lord of the Rings musical opens

The curtain rose in Toronto on Thursday night on an epic musical adaptation of The Lord of the Rings that has taken four years to produce, features 55 actors, 500 pieces of armour and 17 elevators, and cost about -million — making it almost certainly the most expensive stage production in history.