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/ 17 September 2004

Can’t wait for King Kong?

Movie fans who can’t wait for Peter Jackson’s multimillion-dollar remake of King Kong can log on to the internet to watch the gorilla thriller as it is being made. A new website — maintained by fans of the Academy Award-winning director — features online video clips of the normally media-shy Jackson on set with actors and film crew.

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/ 17 September 2004

Angolan oil output exceeds 1m barrels

Angola’s oil production has for the first time broken the one million barrels a day barrier after a new offshore field came online, officials said on Thursday. An offshore field called Kizomba, operated and majority-owned by Britain’s BP Amoco, is producing 120 000 barrels a day, two senior officials with state oil company Sonangol said on condition of anonymity. Sonangol also owns a stake in the field.

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/ 17 September 2004

Falling off the map

”Earlier this year a colleague and I turned left off the N1 to the Gariep Dam area. The dam, once named after Hendrik Verwoerd, was part of the grand Orange River Project of the late 1960s. The main resort still sits in a time warp reminiscent of this era.” Escape visited some forgotten towns whose citizens survived being washed out by an apartheid-era dam-turned-resort.

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/ 17 September 2004

Residents dig mass graves in Fallujah after US strike

United States forces launched attacks on Friday in the Sunni insurgent stronghold of Fallujah and in nearby villages, killing at least 30 people and wounding 40 others, the military and hospital officials said. The strikes began on Thursday and stretched into Friday and targeted allies of terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, separate military statements and witnesses said.

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/ 17 September 2004

Government grants SNO licence

It’s all systems go for South Africa’s second national fixed line telephone operator (SNO). Communications Minister Dr Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri, on Friday announced that she had granted the licence to a consortium consisting of Nexus Connexion, Transtel, Esitel, WIP Investments Nine (trading as Communitel), Two Consortium and the remaining un-allocated equity shareholder, to provide public switched telecommunications services.

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/ 17 September 2004

When the state overrules constitutional rights

Mercenaries are a blight on this continent. So there was an understandable reluctance to mount a case in favour of the group who were arrested in Zimbabwe earlier this year. But it is in the hard cases that our constitutional commitment is best tested. <i>Kaunda and Others v President of the Republic of South Africa and Others</i> is an example of how the Constitutional Court has met this test.

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/ 17 September 2004

Behind Balindlela’s knives

A dodgy R15-million black economic empowerment deal involving a provincial minister in the Eastern Cape and an affluent farmer was being investigated by the head of the provincial treasury, Monde Tom, at the time of his suspension two weeks ago. The M&G has learnt that Tom was probing the agriculture minister, Max Mamase, for his involvement in a controversial land deal.

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/ 17 September 2004

Mr Delivery Jnr

”In a sense it is easier to win the faith of people, [but] people do have greater expectations. The fact that one has collapsed this false battle with national [government] has meant the amount of cooperation and ability to tap into national processes has been enormous … Look at housing! ” Western Cape Premier Ebrahim Rasool talks to Marianne Merten about his first 100 days in office.