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/ 21 September 2005

Authorities scramble to find source of typhoid outbreak

Delmas has seen 26 more cases of typhoid in the last 24 hours, Mpumalanga health department spokesperson Mpho Gabashane said on Tuesday evening. ”Ten people have been discharged while 65 are still hospitalised.” Health promotion activities continued in Delmas on Tuesday as authorities waited for the results of tests that might determine the source of the disease that has claimed four lives and made over 500 ill.

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/ 21 September 2005

Zimbabwe: ‘Wait, see and hope’

A panel of experts on Zimbabwe admitted frustration on Tuesday that international pressure against President Robert Mugabe has failed to weaken his hold on power. Tom Woods, a top African affairs official at the United States State Department, said the grim prospect for Zimbabweans is that Mugabe will remain in power until his term ends in 2008.

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/ 21 September 2005

Deadly storms pound Bay of Bengal

At least 31 people were killed and about 62 000 left homeless when heavy rains pounded coastal areas of India and Bangladesh in the Bay of Bengal, reports said on Wednesday. All the deaths occurred in India’s southern Andhra Pradesh state, which bore the brunt of Tuesday’s storms.

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/ 21 September 2005

Oil is about everything

As thousands of angry Nigerians took to the streets to protest against 30% hikes in fuel price recently, across West Africa some of the world’s poorest were also feeling the pinch, struggling to cope with the record-breaking cost of crude and its knock-on effect on basic goods. Oil prices rocketed from about $40 at the beginning of the year to reach a record high of more than $70 on August 30 this year.

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/ 21 September 2005

More news from the cutting edge

Just to start the column in a way that’s out of this world, literally, consider this surreal item that went up for sale on eBay recently. I mean, you couldn’t make up a more bizarre object than a 1950s Soviet Space Monkey’s Flight Pants. (Oh well, as long as they’re thoroughly washed and disinfected …)

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/ 21 September 2005

A web of control

”Several of this cursed brood, getting hold of the branches behind, leaped up into the tree, whence they began to discharge their excrements on my head.” Thus Gulliver describes his first encounter with the Yahoos. Something similar seems to have happened to democracy.

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/ 21 September 2005

Shoo-in sees support slip

Beneath the elegant art deco facades of the Gansemarkt shopping centre in Hamburg, several hundred people have turned up to hear Angela Merkel. As techno music bursts through the speakers, a woman in a blue trouser suit threads her way to the main stage through a sea of orange banners. A voice booms: ”Here is Germany’s next chancellor, Angela Merkel.”

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/ 21 September 2005

‘Whites only, please’

”The last time I suggested someone try online dating, she replied: ”I’m not that desperate, you know.” Mere seconds before, she had been asking that terribly hard question: ‘Where on Earth can I meet a nice man?’ Her distaste at my suggestion surprised me,” writes Goda Ellis.