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/ 18 February 2005
The JSE Securities Exchange was a mixed bag at noon on Friday after a dull morning session that lacked major drivers. At just over a billion rand, value traded was reasonable, but by no means fantastic. By 12.05pm, the all share index was down a marginal 0,07%. The financial and banks indices fell 0,55% and 1,08% respectively, while the platinum mining index weakened 0,86%.
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/ 18 February 2005
For more than eight years germ warfare expert Wouter Basson has lived in the shadow of the prison gates, accused of masterminding state-sanctioned mass murder under apartheid. Now the Constitutional Court will decide whether his 2002 acquittal on 64 criminal charges was justified, or the result of bias and bad findings by an old-guard Pretoria High Court judge.
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/ 18 February 2005
A survey released in London on Valentine’s Day indicates that the attitudes embodied in Sex and the City are over — and 2005 heralds a return to romance. Casual sex and pornography are no longer popular and singles are looking to be swept off their feet. Long-term relationships are also back in fashion, according to 73% of the 2 500 Britons interviewed.
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/ 18 February 2005
Cape Town mayor Nomaindia Mfeketo has reversed the controversial award of prime beachfront property to black economic empowerment companies — three with links to the African National Congress or its youth league — after a forensic audit found the tender process was ”flawed”. The Big Bay deal was an out of hand sale of 65 plots in Bloubergstrand.
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/ 18 February 2005
The South African government must insist on a postponement of next month’s parliamentary elections in Zimbabwe, and call for immediate negotiations between the ruling Zanu-PF and the opposition MDC, the Democratic Alliance said on Friday.
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/ 18 February 2005
When a Canadian lawyer and corporate governance activist dropped in on an international mining conference in Cape Town last week, he thought it was an opportunity to gather information on dodgy business practices in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Instead he got a swift ejection, a six-month ban from the Cape Town International Convention Centre, and close scrutiny from the National Intelligence Agency.
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/ 18 February 2005
Well-known former trade unionist and skills development specialist Adrienne Bird has been suspended as Deputy Director General in the Department of Labour, in a development that has been linked to the poor performance of the sector education and training authorities (Setas). Bird confirmed her suspension to the Mail & Guardian this week, but refused to comment further.
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/ 18 February 2005
Dutch duo Boudewijn Zenden and Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink scored the goals to give Middlesbrough a 2-2 draw at GAK in Graz on Thursday and put the English side in sight of the last 16 of the Uefa Cup. The Austrians were playing their first match in two months because of their winter break.
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/ 18 February 2005
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) got an overhead view of the planned central area for the 2012 Olympics on Thursday. From a specially constructed viewing platform on the 22nd floor of a retirement home, the IOC’s evaluation commission viewed the 200ha proposed Olympic Park in Stratford, a largely run-down area of East London.
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/ 18 February 2005
Aid workers in Afghanistan said on Friday they feared up to 1Â 000 children may have died from cold and malnutrition during severe winter weather affecting the west of the war-shattered country. Western Ghor province has been hit hard by snowstorms in Afghanistan’s worst winter for more than a decade and most of the province remains out of reach of humanitarian aid.