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/ 27 February 2004

Kiss kiss bang bang

<b>MOVIE OF THE WEEK:</b> As far as I can see, the main competitors for this year’s best-actress Oscar are Charlize Theron and Diane Keaton. Onse Charlize, however, could well snatch it from Keaton. Theron’s performance in <i>Monster</i> is the kind of thing the Oscars love to reward: glamour queen goes ugly, which is deemed to be an example of great self-sacrifice in the name of art, writes Shaun de Waal.

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/ 27 February 2004

Missionary position

Owen Sheers has a rollicking good story to tell. But he writes (as he says of his distant uncle’s method of constructing letters), "well-defined words placed one after the other, carefully building the sentences like a bricklayer laying his bricks tenderly in the wet cement to build himself a wall". It makes for a suffocating read. Alexander Fuller reviews <i>The Dust Diaries</i>.

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/ 27 February 2004

From the school yard to your living room

You must have noticed by now that IT devices are getting more and more aesthetically pleasing. PCs, cellphones and personal devices are starting to take a shape of their own. Cellphones sport "waistlines", PCs come in a range of your favourite colours and shapes with see-through keyboards and colour-coded mouses.

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/ 27 February 2004

Tender trouble at technikon

An internal probe into Technikon Witwatersrand (TWR) has uncovered widespread tender irregularities and mismanagement. The probe, conducted by accounting firm Deloitte & Touche, was launched in September last year after upheaval on the campus initially thought to derive from student resentment at restrictions placed on visitations at gender-segregated residences.

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/ 27 February 2004

The mind of the voter

”South Africans choose to vote for political parties for many reasons — sometimes obvious, and sometimes subtle — but they are not simply trapped into casting their ballots along racial and ethnic lines. ”Casting a ballot is primarily not an instrumental calculation but an expression of who a citizen is,” said Steven Friedman, senior researcher at the Centre for Policy Studies.

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/ 27 February 2004

Roll-out or cop-out on Aids drugs?

Pity the person with Aids who is trying to find out where to go for anti-retroviral (ARV) treatment or how long it will take for the drugs to be available. The Mail & Guardian‘s attempts for the past month to obtain concrete information from each province suggest that public access to the life-prolonging drugs will be akin to a lottery and will depend on where you live.

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/ 27 February 2004

Ministers pour cold water on Gadaffi’s big idea

Foreign ministers from more than 50 African states showed more skepticism than enthusiasm on Thursday for Libyan leader Moammar Gadaffi’s idea of creating a single African army to defend the continent. Libyan officials touted the proposal as ”a progressive idea,” but delegates from other nations cautioned that it needed a lot of research.

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/ 27 February 2004

Scientists suspect health threat from GM maize

Scientists investigating a spate of illnesses among people living close to GM maize fields in the Philippines believe that the crop may have triggered fevers, respiratory illnesses and skin reactions. The scientists’ findings were immediately challenged by Monsanto, the world’s leading GM company, and by the Philippine government.