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/ 7 January 2005

Briefly sporting

Not the Mail & Guardian is Robert Kirby’s startling and savagely satirical parody of the Mail & Guardian newspaper. Any similarity between real people and characters portrayed here is anything but coincidental Schumacher looks for new challenge: Seven times formula one world champion Michael Schumacher has quit Ferrari for Minardi. Said Schumacher: ‘Minardi have made […]

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/ 7 January 2005

Skop, skiet and soccer

The Sky News “Hijack Live” box was disappointingly immobile. As Rupert Murdoch fed the informational equivalent of white sugar to England’s lowest common denominator on his news channel, the picture-in-a-window resolutely refused to show anything resembling what broadcasters were calling “drama”. After 10 minutes a policeman had walked past, and the rolling billboard behind the bus on the dim Athenian street had changed 10 times.

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/ 7 January 2005

JSE powers into the new year

The JSE Securities Exchange powered into the new year on a record high, picking up from where it left off last year. On Tuesday the FTSE/JSE Africa all share index reached 12 784,34 points, the latest in a series of records that have been displaced since October. Tuesday’s performance took place in a relatively thin trading volume, with turnover at roughly R1,5-billon.

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/ 7 January 2005

Tragic panto of matric

The absurd drama of matric continues. And the release of the results every festive season is an exceptionally long-running government production that by now rivals an Andrew Lloyd Webber blockbuster. For the next three years, the country as a whole — and thousands of pupils, teachers and parents in particular — will sweat through the matric endurance test.

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/ 7 January 2005

Horn of Africa’s horror

The tsunami triggered by an earthquake in the Indian Ocean that struck the Horn of Africa coastline on December 26 has affected about 18 000 households of varying sizes in Somalia, the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said. Many of those affected were living in small villages along the Somali coastline, particularly in the north-eastern regions. Their lives were devastated by the waves.

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/ 7 January 2005

TB treatment overhaul required

In the crowded wards of African hospitals, coughs and bony bodies tell the story of a deadly return. Tuberculosis (TB), supposedly defeated 40 years ago, is back, riding on the Aids epidemic, and the world is ill-prepared, says the relief agency Médécins sans Frontières (MSF). TB kills two million people every year, nearly all in developing countries. Yet TB is curable.

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/ 7 January 2005

In the mood for cricket

Scorecards, compactly final, insist that cricket matches are singular events. Results imply a beginning, a middle and an end. Match reports enforce closure. Test matches begin (the dailies imply) in order to finish. But the weekly commentator, cut adrift from this headlong rush, has the opportunity to play truant.

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/ 7 January 2005

Israel yokes poll process

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon warned Jewish settlers on Wednesday that he will use all the government’s power against anyone who resists his planned withdrawal from Gaza and the granting of a token part of the West Bank. His comment came after an angry confrontation between settlers and the Israeli army in which the police helped to remove two settler outposts at Shalhevet in the hard line Yizhar settlement on the West Bank.