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/ 16 September 2004
South African economists have different opinions on the impact of Thursday’s public-sector strike on the economy overall. T-Sec economist Mike Schussler contends that the South African public-sector wage bill is relatively too high for a developing country, and this is a major problem.
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/ 16 September 2004
An American bounty hunter who illegally detained and tortured Afghan prisoners was on Wednesday jailed for 10 years in Kabul. ”We should have let the Taliban kill them all,” yelled Jonathan ‘Jack’ Idema, a former member of the United States special forces, as he was taken off to serve his sentence in the Kabul jail where he had been held since his arrest on July 5.
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/ 16 September 2004
The United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan, declared explicitly for the first time on Wednesday night that the United States-led war on Iraq was illegal. Annan said that the invasion was not sanctioned by the United Nations Security Council or in accordance with the UN’s founding charter.
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/ 16 September 2004
Johnny Ramone, guitarist and co-founder of the seminal punk band The Ramones, has died. He was 55. Ramone died in his sleep on Wednesday afternoon at his Los Angeles home surrounded by friends and family, his publicist said. He had battled prostate cancer for five years, and was hospitalised in June at Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre.
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/ 16 September 2004
Voluntary testing or mandatory testing? That is the question Aids activists and government officials are grappling with in Zambia, where about one million people have already died in the pandemic since the late 1980s. As a draft national Aids policy is still under discussion, lawmakers have yet to finalise their position on the matter of testing.
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/ 16 September 2004
This week’s strike by public servants revealed a terrain reshaped since the last action in 1999. For one, the level of public sympathy with strikers was notable — people want decent public services because they are making the connection between poor service and poorly paid civil servants.
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/ 16 September 2004
Fanie Lombaard, the ”top gun” of South Africa’s team at the Athens Paralympics, arrived on Thursday for his fourth campaign at the Games since his country’s readmission to world sport at Barcelona 1992. Also there is 17-year-old amputee sprinter Oscar Pistorius, who is in grade 11 at Pretoria Boys’ High.
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/ 16 September 2004
South African lightweight boxing king Isaac ”Angel” Hlatshwayo has vacated his national title to challenge Lovemore Ndou for the WBA Pan Pacific junior welterweight title in Australia on October 16. Hlatshwayo, the proud owner of the coveted Old Buck Belt, was supposed to defend against Nigel Classen on September 28.
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/ 16 September 2004
More than 130 years after Alfred Packer ate his five companions to survive a Colorado winter, a museum curator is making a case that the notorious cannibal was innocent of murder. Years of research and detective work at the site where Packer was stranded seem to support at least part of his story: that he only killed to defend himself from a member of their party who had slain his fellow prospectors and was making a meal of human flesh.