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/ 1 September 2004
Ten local councillors from various parties crossed over to the Freedom Front Plus within hours of the floor-crossing window period coming into effect, party leader Pieter Mulder said on Wednesday. Included in the crossings was former chairperson of the New National Party caucus Wrentia Landman.
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/ 1 September 2004
Nine people were still not accounted for by Wednesday afternoon after a gas explosion that claimed six lives at Sasol’s Secunda plant, police said. A spokesperson for the petrochemical company, Johann van Rheede, told reporters on the scene that more than 100 people were injured in the blast in Sasol’s ethylene plant.
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/ 1 September 2004
A Malaysian woman seeking to reclaim a world record by living with more than 6 000 scorpions in a glass cage for 36 days said on Wednesday she had been stung by the nation’s indifference. ”All my activities are constrained and there’s a lot of pressure. But people don’t understand how I feel. They think I am just sitting in here doing nothing,” Nur Malena Hassan said.
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/ 1 September 2004
There are ghosts on the farm. You wouldn’t notice them on a summer morning, under the white heat of the Central Valley sun. But David Mas Masumoto can read the scars they’ve left — old pruning wounds carved like graffiti on the twisted trunks of the peach trees and grapevines by the countless hands that have shaped them.
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/ 1 September 2004
Independent Democrats leader Patricia de Lille has sent out 6Â 500 SMSes to councillors across the country urging them to defect to her party, according to one of her MPs, Avril Harding. The defection window starts for municipal councillors runs until September 15.
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/ 1 September 2004
West Africa should enlist the military to win the war on locusts, Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade said on Tuesday, as locust swarms reached the capital, Dakar, swirling around in the sky like yellow snowflakes. Children made impromptu attempts to kill the locusts, kicking and swiping at them with sticks.
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/ 1 September 2004
I suppose I would have enjoyed my schooling years had I not had to get up at 5am in the dark winters and wait for several minutes for the school bus to collect and take us to suburbia. We were apartheid’s guinea pigs, the first black test-tube babies — and the experiment failed. We were the original buppies. One would have expected us to be today’s captains of industry, wouldn’t one?
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/ 1 September 2004
Former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher has agreed to post bail of 350Â 000 pounds (about R4,1-million) to free her son Mark from house arrest in South Africa, The Times newspaper reported on Wednesday. Mark Thatcher, a 51-year-old businessman, was arrested in Cape Town a week ago on suspicion of helping to finance an alleged coup bid in oil-rich Equatorial Guinea. He denies the allegation.
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/ 1 September 2004
Alleged coup financier Mark Thatcher will pay his bail by the end of the week, his lawyer said on Wednesday, but declined to comment on a report that his mother, former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, is posting the money for her son. Thatcher is under house arrest at his Cape Town home.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=BreakingNews-National&ao=121438">Margaret Thatcher posts bail for Mark</a>
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/ 1 September 2004
Trade union Solidarity on Wednesday claimed that more than 30Â 000 activists and trade union members worldwide will be mustered this week against dual-listed telecommunication giant Telkom’s planned retrenchments. The London-based website <i>Labour Start</i> contains an exposition of the planned retrenchment of 4Â 181 Telkom workers.