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/ 10 October 2005
Liberians go to the polls on Tuesday in the country’s first general elections since civil war was brought to a halt in 2003. About 1,3-million registered voters — out of a population of 3,5-million — will queue on October 11 to choose a president from 22 candidates.
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/ 10 October 2005
Wale Tinubu looms large on Nigeria’s economic landscape — a savvy and smooth operator deeply entrenched in the oil and energy sectors. At 38 years of age, Tinubu is the group CEO of oil company Oando, which he has grown from a tiny private family business, known as Ocean and Oil, into a big player in sub-Saharan Africa.
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/ 10 October 2005
Sir Ian Blair personally ordered that independent investigators be denied access to the scene where an innocent man had been shot dead by police after being mistaken for a suicide bomber, it emerged recently. The commissioner of London’s Metropolitan police wrote to the Home Office to block an independent investigation into the death of Jean Charles de Menezes
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/ 10 October 2005
Namibian President Hifikepunye Pohamba’s anti-corruption drive has reignited divisions within the ruling party and is driving a wedge between himself and his predecessor Sam Nujoma, according to Swapo insiders. When Pohamba forced Paulus Kapia to resign from his Cabinet in late August, it seemed a mere formality that he would also be expelled from the former liberation movement as well.
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/ 10 October 2005
The British government is attempting to overturn a court ruling that prevents foreign terrorist suspects from being deported from Britain to Algeria and other countries with poor human rights records. Lawyers acting for the government have found a way of mounting an early challenge to the 1996 ruling from the European court of human rights.
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/ 10 October 2005
Stephen Hawking’s book A Brief History of Time clung to the bestseller lists for 237 weeks. He has now published a new, more accessible version of the book. In a rare interview he talks to the Mail & Guardian about disability, why women can’t read maps and thinking in 11 dimensions.
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/ 10 October 2005
Poor rural households in drought-ravaged southern Zimbabwe have exhausted their food stocks and are resorting to eating wild roots in a bid to stave off hunger. Erratic supplies by the state’s Grain Marketing Board and the lack of essential commodities in rural shops have combined to undermine food security in the semi-arid Matabeleland region.
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/ 10 October 2005
The question of whether South Africa is producing enough new teachers is the subject of hot debate. But it is one that we need clear answers to, particularly in the light of our national aspiration to provide quality education for all.
The uneasy truce between African National Congress president Thabo Mbeki and his deputy, Jacob Zuma, will come under renewed strain this week, when thousands are set to march in support of Zuma during his court appearance. Zuma will be making a routine court appearance on Tuesday at the Durban Magistrate’s Court, where a trial date is likely to be set.
In her capacity as one of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development’s (Nepad) eminent persons, Graca Machel is visiting Kenya for the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM). She is accompanied on the bruising two-week trip through the East African giant by her husband, Nelson Mandela. Kenya is in the throes of a sometimes violent referendum campaign.