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/ 28 September 2005
South Africa must handle its self-assessment in terms of the African Peer Review Mechanism in a way that will benefit the rest of the continent, President Thabo Mbeki said on Wednesday. ”It is natural that the rest of the continent will watch this process very carefully,” Mbeki said in Midrand.
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/ 28 September 2005
More haste … and snail-mail speed. That’s the story of the government’s attempt to rush a law for the fast-happening integration of online media, broadcasting and telephony. Twenty-six months of public representations and parliamentary deliberations have finally concluded a Convergence Bill that is now almost ready for adoption in the House of Assembly.
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/ 28 September 2005
South Africa slipped one position to 42nd in the <i>Global Competitiveness Report</i> released on Wednesday by the World Economic Forum, but this was only because two new countries, Qatar (19) and Kuwait (33), came in above it. In an unchanged universe, South Africa would have moved up one position to 40th.
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/ 28 September 2005
Police have detained a journalist on charges of incitement stemming from a commentary he wrote during a constitutional debate that has brought Kenyans to blows, his editor said on Wednesday. Detectives lured David Ochami of the Kenya Times from the newsroom on Tuesday by pretending to be news sources.
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/ 28 September 2005
At least 4Â 000 children who were among some of the tens of thousands abducted by the Ugandan rebels from the north of the country cannot be traced, a Ugandan human rights group said in a report obtained on Wednesday. The report by Uganda Human Rights Commmission also accuses government forces of torturing civilians in the war-ravaged region.
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/ 28 September 2005
Armed with an automatic rifle, the Egyptian guard, Ahmed, took shelter from the scorching sun in the ruins of an old border crossing. Nearby, a Palestinian teenager from the Gaza side of this poor border town emerged from a bushy trail that stretches across the buffer of clumsy barbed wire fences and guard posts. Then the 14-year-old, Salama, sneaked across the porous frontier, hauling a plastic bag.
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/ 28 September 2005
A government commission is looking into the alleged defection of eight soccer players from a squad that went to play a friendly exhibition match in Britain, a newspaper reported on Wednesday. Officials confirmed on Monday the eight had failed to show up at London’s Heathrow airport last week for the return flight.
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/ 28 September 2005
Financial website Moneyweb reported on Wednesday that murdered mining magnate Brett Kebble was in the wrong place at the wrong time and said it appeared that his death was the result of a failed car hijacking, and not an assassination. Earlier, reports quoted business partner Andile Nkuhlu as saying Kebble had been the victim of a callous, premeditated crime.
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/ 28 September 2005
Japanese zoologists have made the first recording of a live giant squid, one of the strangest and most elusive creatures in the world. The size of a bus, with vast eyes and a querulous beak, <i>Architeuthis dux</i> has long nourished myth and literature, and until now, the only evidence of giant squids was extraordinarily rare.
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/ 28 September 2005
The row between the government and the world’s biggest diamond company, De Beers, intensified recently as the deadline for comment on controversial new legislation aimed at limiting the export of uncut gems expired. Jonathan Oppenheimer, MD of De Beers Consolidated Mines, told Reuters on Monday that the Diamonds Amendment Bill had ”potentially damaging” unintended consequences.