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/ 23 January 2005
Opponents of Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo were set to have talks with South African President Thabo Mbeki, the African Union’s mediator in the divided country. The meeting comes two years after the signing of the unsuccessful French-brokered agreement designed to restore normality to Ivory Coast.
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/ 23 January 2005
The project of rebuilding District Six floundered as a result of lack of funds, but late last year the clouds parted, when a bank agreed to lend financial muscle to the rebuilding. A scheme to sell bonds secured against the value of the new homes is now expected to resurrect the project.
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/ 23 January 2005
An international team of doctors is set to launch a desperate, last-ditch bid to save Africa from polio, a scourge once believed to have been defeated but which has recently returned to haunt the continent. Scientists say the attempt is a make-or-break effort to eradicate this crippling, sometimes fatal illness.
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/ 23 January 2005
Andrew Flintoff and Simon Jones tore through the South African batting line-up to have the home side reeling on 247 for nine in their first innings when lightning interrupted play on the second day of the fifth and final Castle Lager/MTN cricket Test at Supersport Park on Saturday.
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/ 22 January 2005
Perhaps Minister of Sport and Recreation Makhenkesi Stofile is just dumber than a bag full of hammers. But whatever half-formed notions flitted through what we will, for the sake of charity, refer to as the minister’s brain, the result was a prediction that genocide was imminent in South African rugby.
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/ 22 January 2005
The government flouted procurement procedures in signing a commitment to purchase up to 12 new military transport aircrafts at a cost of about R1-billion each. The Mail & Guardian revealed last year that the government was to buy A400M heavy transporters from Airbus Military.
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/ 22 January 2005
The doors of learning were slammed shut against many pupils in various parts of the country as schools re-opened last week and again this week. In many cases the lock-outs were illegal, some provincial officials said this week. Unions said work on the ground suggested illegal exclusions still affected thousands of children.
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/ 22 January 2005
America’s second biggest bank, JP Morgan Chase, has made a rare apology for its subsidiaries’ involvement in the slave trade 200 years ago, admitting that it accepted slaves as loan collateral and ended up owning several hundred. In a letter to employees it expressed contrition for involvement in a ”brutal and unjust institution”.
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/ 22 January 2005
Zimbabwe’s main opposition party has ”serious reservations” about the credentials of the man chosen to head a new election commission to supervise crunch legislative polls in March. But the MDC , in a statement issued late Friday, said it hoped the body would do its job without fear or favour.
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/ 22 January 2005
Thwack! With one mighty blow the comic-book creator Stan Lee took a swipe at Marvel comics this week. Ugh! A judge in the United States awarded the 82-year-old deviser of Spider-Man, the Incredible Hulk and X-Men a 10% share of the profits from films and television productions based on his characters.