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/ 20 September 2005

Trends in the BEE arena

There are a number of disturbing trends currently sweeping through the black economic empowerment landscape. One is the intransigence of white capital. The other is what company directors would call dereliction of duty by both the government and the private sector.

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/ 20 September 2005

Talking on the fly

Two European airlines will allow passengers late next year to use their own cellphones on commercial flights within western Europe, a Geneva-based technology firm said on Tuesday. TAP Air Portugal and British carrier bmi both have agreed to introduce OnAir’s voice and text service for cellphones in separate three-month trial runs.

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/ 20 September 2005

The Goddess of the Israelites

The discovery that the deities of ancient Palestine were female ought to be good news for all of humanity, not just women. Even the increasingly beleaguered monotheistic religions might find reason to be pleased, for it gives them opportunity to reinvent a deity that will represent the yin and the yang.

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/ 19 September 2005

Provinces pass, councils fail

There’s good and bad news from the social delivery interface, but mostly it is good. Personnel costs are down, capital expenditure is up, the provinces are growing their implementation capacity, social development expenditure has more than doubled since 2001/02 and nearly 5,6-million children are getting child support grants, up from 970 000 in 2001/02.

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/ 19 September 2005

Living with Aids in the military

Private Andries Nhlengethwa jumps from planes and lifts 45kg weights. He also happens to have HIV. The 31-year-old parachutist and bodybuilder is one of the few South African soldiers living openly with the deadly virus, presenting a new face of the pandemic on a continent where Aids drugs are rare and infection is often a death sentence.

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/ 19 September 2005

How German voters disappointed Blair

The inconclusive result of Germany’s election has deprived British Prime Minister Tony Blair of a much-sought ally in a crusade to reform Europe’s lacklustre economy, political analysts said on Monday. Officially, Downing Street declined to comment on the outcome of Sunday’s German vote that left Gerhard Schröder and conservative challenger Angela Merkel both claiming victory.