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/ 25 February 2004

Bush backs gay wedding ban

President George Bush on Tuesday plunged headlong into the United States’s culture wars, allying himself with the Christian right-wing of his Republican party by endorsing a constitutional amendment to ban same sex marriage, and calling heterosexual marriage ”the most fundamental institution of civilisation”.

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/ 25 February 2004

It’s written in the stars

How Stephen Hawking spent Valentines Day, the true origins of humanity, odd blobs on Mars and George Dubya’s little known cocaine habits — Ian Fraser brings you the world in one web browser. Take a look what you missed in mainstream newspapers this week.

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/ 25 February 2004

A dose of strong medicine

Three critical pieces of health legislation are about to be signed into law or are being drafted for future legislation. These are the regulations relating to a transparent pricing system for medicines and scheduled substances, social health insurance and the certificate of need.

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/ 25 February 2004

Tibet’s cry falls on deaf ears

When Lodi Gyari Rinpoche set foot on South African soil earlier this month as a delegate to the third World Conference on Democracy in Durban, he must have been struck by the historical parallels between this southern corner of Africa and his faraway spiritual home. This special envoy of the Dalai Lama believes South Africa has a moral responsibility to speak out against the situation in Tibet.

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/ 25 February 2004

No hope for a harvest

Last August when President Thabo Mbeki visited what his imbizo programme called a "land reform project" in Ceres, he was perhaps unaware of the Deo Volenti farm’s looming ruin and tattered relations between farm workers, shareholders and the trust’s chairperson. But without enough seed, equipment or support,
a land reform dream in the Ceres Valley has become a nightmare.