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/ 9 February 2005
Condoleezza Rice, the United States Secretary of State, launched a transatlantic bridge-building exercise on Tuesday night, urging Europe and the US to set aside their differences over the Iraq war and work together to spread democracy around the world.
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/ 9 February 2005
Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced an unqualified end to all Israeli military attacks on the Palestinians on Tuesday as part of a historic ceasefire that formally ends more than four years of brutal intifada, suicide bombings and the destruction of occupied towns.
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/ 9 February 2005
It is that time of the year again where the matric results are scrutinised, pulled apart and defended or doomed. Education officials vow to spend more money on improving the teaching situation for Grades 11 and 12. But is this where they should be concentrating their efforts, asks Elsie Calitz.
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/ 9 February 2005
Early Childhood Development (ECD) in South Africa has come a long way since the inception of Ntataise about 25 ago. In 1980, when the organisation started, ECD opportunities and preschools for children in disadvantaged rural areas were virtually non-existent. Jane Evans, director of Ntataise, looks back.
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/ 9 February 2005
HIV/Aids is a serious subject, and is not usually much fun. But this time it was. In this remote spot of southern Côte d’Ivoire, it was as if the circus had come to town. Under the banner of the Aids lexicon project, a team of specialists were here to introduce local language equivalents for words like "Aids" and "contraceptives" to promote a better understanding of the virus among the country’s rural population.
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/ 9 February 2005
Msinga, in KwaZulu-Natal, has been hit hard by HIV/Aids and the number of funerals in the district has risen dramatically in recent years. According to custom, farmers will not work their fields for one week after the death of a man and two days after the death of a woman. As the number of funerals rises each week, farmland lies fallow. Honouring the dead is putting this community’s livelihood at risk.
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/ 9 February 2005
"I’ve been waiting years to say this in a public place — would you mind if I nibbled at Uranus? Or if you’re phobic, maybe I could just eat your Mars? Before you get huffy and indignant, some chocolate-makers decided that what the world needed was a fully edible party pack of all the planets of the solar system, made out of chocolate." This, and more, from Ian Fraser’s goodie bag.
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/ 9 February 2005
When 14-year-old Joyce Gwabasa went to the police station near her home on the KwaZulu-Natal South Coast, to report a street fight, she had no idea that the two officers whom she trusted to deal with the crime would attempt to rape her. KwaZulu-Natal’s safety and security minister has admitted that nine police stations in the Durban area have "bad, bad police officers working there".
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/ 9 February 2005
”If the Transitional Federal Government does not make human rights a base for … its political structures, I do not think the project of reconciliation will succeed,” Ghanim Alnajjar told journalists in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi, Monday, after returning from a two-week visit to Somalia.
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/ 9 February 2005
I saw a particular skirt at Woolworths when I moved to Pretoria in 2001. Late last year I saw it advertised as the latest fashion in Lusaka. My Zambian friends often gripe about near-expiration film dumped on them by South African retailers. Among the other expired products that South Africa proudly dumps beyond its borders are its older white executives, past their shelf life owing to black empowerment at home.