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/ 3 February 2006
President Thabo Mbeki was criticised for glimpsing over Aids, Zimbabwe and corruption in his State of the Nation address on Friday, but praised for his focus on social upliftment based on economic growth. His announcement of a review of the government’s willing-seller, willing-buyer approach to land reform also drew mixed response.
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/ 3 February 2006
Brett Lee added to his growing reputation as a lethal limited-overs bowler as he snared 4-30, including three wickets in one over, as Australia crashed and bashed their way to an 80-run win over South Africa in Melbourne on Friday. Batsmen Michael Hussey and Andrew Symonds softened up Australia’s opponents.
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/ 3 February 2006
Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai and about 10 officials of his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party were early on Thursday morning deported from Zambia where they had gone to attend meetings, MDC spokesperson Nelson Chamisa said.
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/ 3 February 2006
Nine out of 10 South African teenagers in drug rehabilitation will revert to their addictions within a year, an expert working with young people said on Friday. ”The drug rehabilitation system is not geared towards teenagers,” Quintin van Kerken, spokesperson for Bokatie, a teenage rehabilitation centre in Johannesburg, said.
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/ 3 February 2006
Many people were feared dead on Friday when an Egyptian ferry with about 1Â 400 on board, including many Muslim pilgrims, sank in the Red Sea during a crossing from Saudi Arabia to Egypt. Twenty bodies were recovered amid fears of a much higher death toll, while survivors were battling for their lives in lifeboats in heavy seas.
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/ 3 February 2006
The South African Football Association (Safa) website lists the date of birth of its technical committee chairperson, Sturu Pasiya, as January 26 2006 — the same day that Bafana Bafana were beaten 2-0 by Tunisia in the African Nations Cup in Egypt. The website listing is a glitch, but the impression remains that Safa is peopled by some babes in the woods.
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/ 3 February 2006
Two-thirds of the government’s community development workers — the grassroots civil servants deployed by President Thabo Mbeki to boost local government services — have failed to find jobs in municipalities in the Western Cape. In his 2003 State of the Nation address, Mbeki launched the scheme to bring government services to people’s place of residence.
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/ 3 February 2006
Clever electronic features are the make-or-break feature in many new toys on display at the Nuremberg Toy Fair, which entered the second day on Friday of a six-day run. Baby Shark, a toy from Super Grand Enterprise of Hong Kong, exemplifies how makers are taking traditional playthings and giving them a new twist.
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/ 3 February 2006
A fitness training programme from Mauritius is the reason former president Nelson Mandela did not attend his successor’s State of the Nation address at Parliament on Friday. The Nelson Mandela Foundation said in a statement the former president had called President Thabo Mbeki to wish him well, and apologised for not being able to attend the address.
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/ 3 February 2006
The notion of freedom of speech is damned pretty, but it contains one fundamental flaw: it allows people to speak freely. This severe shortcoming has presented immense obstacles to progressive societies over the centuries and while some of the more athletic Occidental nations have made strides in correcting its foibles the most insidious fantasy of our age has taken hold of the public imagination.