Roll up! Roll up! It’s show time in the twilight zone that is North Korea. Take your seats for one of the greatest, strangest, most awe-inspiring political spectacles on Earth. Forget the nukes, forget the poverty, forget the reclusive reputation; this country is going to entertain you like you have never been entertained before. All welcome — even American imperialists and journalists.
The frequency of infection-free blood and not race will be used as the prime risk indictor when collecting or issuing blood, the South African National Blood Service said on Friday. However, for ”sound medical reasons” donors will be asked — voluntarily — to indicate their ethnic group on donor questionnaires.
President Thabo Mbeki paid tribute on Friday to Transkei-born activist Wycliffe Mlungisi ”Wyckie” Tsotsi, who had died earlier this week. ”His death has robbed South Africa and the African continent of a hero of the struggle for liberation, non-racism, non-sexism and justice,” Mbeki said.
President Thabo Mbeki grilled Northern Cape mayors on Friday about underspending on their capital budgets. He also warned that local-level infighting in the African National Congress, which hampers municipal delivery, has to stop. His interventions came during a day-long local government meeting, in Kimberley, with municipal, national and provincial politicians and officials.
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/ 30 September 2005
Some of David’s* earliest memories are of huddling around a paraffin stove, eating his grandmother’s fishcakes, while his grandfather kept him enthralled with ghost stories and old fishermen’s legends. David is one of the many Rastafarian fishermen who live in the informal settlement of Hangberg, above Hout Bay harbour
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/ 30 September 2005
More than 20 officials in the Limpopo department of health are facing a disciplinary inquiry after an audit report alleged that they irregularly received contracts worth millions of rands from the department. Recently, a departmental spokesperson confirmed that the officials, would be hauled before a disciplinary hearing on charges of irregularities and gross misconduct.
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/ 30 September 2005
British artist Patrick Caulfield, noted for his sparse, precise studies of interiors and still life, has died, a gallery said on Friday. He was 69. Caulfield died on Thursday in London. Coming out in the 1960s generation of artists, Caulfield’s bold images were often associated with pop art.
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/ 30 September 2005
Friday’s Constitutional Court judgement on medicine-pricing regulations should be interpreted as a victory for the Department of Health and citizens, Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang said. ”The judgement cannot be interpreted to say the department was wrong,” she told reporters in Pretoria. The court, she said, merely identified ”a few minor defects” in the regulations.
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/ 30 September 2005
Sunni-led insurgents killed at least nine people, including women and children, with a car bomb in a crowded vegetable market on Friday in the second blast against Shi’ite civilians in as many days, police said. The death toll rose to nearly 100 from the previous day’s coordinated string of suicide bombings and mortars in another town.
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/ 30 September 2005
Cooler, wetter air and calmer wind helped thousands of firefighters battling a wildfire early on Friday that has pushed hundreds of people from their homes in the hills and canyons along Los Angeles’s north-western edge. The fire, which has burned an estimated 8 300ha, was 20% contained on Friday morning.