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/ 28 September 2005

Pahad strengthens ties with Pyongyang

Diplomatic relations with North Korea are only seven years old but are steadily strengthening, South African Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Aziz Pahad said in Pyongyang on Tuesday. His visit was part of a three-nation trip to central and east Asia that included South Korea and China, comes in the context of South Africa’s commitment to consolidate relations with all countries of the South.

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/ 28 September 2005

Getting feet dirty in Soweto

A year ago, Cedric de la Harpe did not know Soweto. He was a northern-suburb resident running a security and cleaning business. An official visit to Soweto in July last year to celebrate the awarding of the Soccer World Cup to South Africa was a turning point in his life. Today, he spends most of his time in Soweto.

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/ 28 September 2005

Animals and crazies and ninjas, oh my!

Another week of new stories, showing that the world at large is more bizarre and deranged than you and I could ever dream of, Horatio. Think I’m kidding? Let’s start off with the Gary Larson-like effect of animals trapped in a world with humans in charge. For instance, did you hear the one about the stupid dog that fell off a cliff, then was bitten by a snake, and then gored by a wild animal?

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/ 28 September 2005

BAe’s secret £1m to Pinochet

The United Kingdom’s Serious Fraud Office is expected to launch an investigation into disclosures that the British arms company BAe secretly paid more than £1-million to the former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. The Guardian revealed how BAe had been identified in United States banking records as routing the payments through front companies between 1997 and last year.

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/ 28 September 2005

Private sector drives China’s growth

China’s explosive rise to economic superpower status was confirmed by the West’s leading think tank recently, in a new report predicting that the Asian nation would leapfrog the United States and Germany within five years to become the world’s biggest exporter. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development said there would be no let-up in the country’s breakneck growth.

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/ 28 September 2005

Asari charged

The threat of violence in Nigeria’s volatile oil-producing Niger Delta has escalated after police said they would charge Moujahid Dokubo-Asari of the Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force with treason. Thousands of Shell employees at the company’s operations in the city of Port Harcourt vacated their workstations as a safety precaution, the company announced recently.

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/ 28 September 2005

Is the two state option still viable?

”There is a saying that goes ”pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will”. This might be a useful refrain when considering the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. A Palestinian state, it seems, is increasingly in the interest of the Zionist project,” writes Suren Pillay, a lecturer in the department of political studies at the University of the Western Cape.