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/ 10 December 2004
In Newcastle at weekends you can hardly move these days for blokes wearing T-shirts emblazoned with their nicknames -”Cidergut”, ”Sumo”, ”Nobby”. It’s as if they need a constant reminder of who they are and the mayhem they are bent on. A visceral need to celebrate and affirm through the medium of screen-printing afflicts footballers, too.
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/ 10 December 2004
”The goal was … worth millions.” The carefully expressed thoughts of Liverpool’s slightly starchy Spanish coach Rafael Benitez capture the essence of this week’s final round of Champions League group matches. And that essence is Steve Gerrard, arguably the best player in the Premiership right now.
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/ 9 December 2004
Canada’s Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that government plans to allow same-sex marriage are constitutional, in a landmark ruling in the long battle for equal rights for gays and lesbians. The government had asked the court to examine its Bill before it enters Parliament, a step expected to follow early next year.
South Africa will sign a deal for a fleet of new military aircraft worth R8-billion before Christmas. The Department of Transport released a press statement on Thursday afternoon confirming the deal, after the Mail & Guardian had already gone to print with its report on the acquisition.
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/ 9 December 2004
Hundreds of Burundians have been accidentally killed by landmines since December 2002, when a ceasefire agreement was signed between the government and the three main rebel groups. Two years after the ceasefire, a systemic programme to clear landmines is still only an ideal.
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/ 9 December 2004
In a ceremony redolent with irony, former struggle icon Abram Fischer received a posthumous honorary doctorate from the University of Stellenbosch in a packed DF Malan hall on Thursday. The controversial award to Fischer, an Afrikaner communist, was a culmination of events that had divided the university.
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/ 9 December 2004
The wanted leader of a Palestinian militant group and two of his lieutenants survived an Israeli assassination bid on Thursday after an air strike targeted their vehicle in the southern Gaza Strip. An unmanned plane fired a rocket at the white-coloured vehicle that was carrying three members of the militant Popular Resistance Committees.
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/ 9 December 2004
The South African Police Service (SAPS) and the South African Security Association both came out in defence on Thursday of the SAPS’s decision to employ private security companies for guard duties at police premises. ”It is much cheaper and cost-effective to utilise private security services,” said SAPS communications head Joseph Ngobeni.
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/ 9 December 2004
Abdullah Brenner, a hitman in the plot to assassinate Cape Town regional magistrate Wilma van der Merwe, was jailed on Thursday for 10 years. His co-accused Ashraf Lee, who unwittingly became involved in the conspiracy, was given a two-year sentence suspended conditionally for four years on a firearm charge.