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/ 27 February 2004

Two dinosaurs fossils found in Antarctica

Researchers probing mountains and ancient seas in Antarctica have discovered two previously unknown types of dinosaurs, the National Science Foundation reported. The fossilised remains, thousands of kilometres from each other, were found less than a week apart on the frozen continent that once had a far warmer climate.

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/ 27 February 2004

Kenyan ‘bribe taxes’ decreased in 2003

A report launched in Kenya this week indicates that levels of bribery in the country decreased last year. The third Kenya Bribery Index was issued on Tuesday this week by the Kenyan chapter of Transparency International, a Berlin-based NGO. It says that monthly expenditure on bribery in 2003 was about ,8 per person, compared to per person in 2002.

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/ 27 February 2004

Sounds of Sekoto

A year after the lost music of Gerard Sekoto, perhaps South Africa’s foremost pioneer painter, was discovered in an old suitcase in the storeroom of the South African National Gallery in Cape Town, a CD of his music is to be recorded by BMG Africa featuring the Blue Heads, a progressive Afro-fusion-jazz ensemble led by veteran jazz pianist, Dimpie Tshabalala. Sarah Hudleston reports.

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/ 27 February 2004

Every picture tells a story

"We are not having any visual art in the Constitutional Court chamber. Someone said the judges don’t want any competition — they want the public to look at us. But that’s not the reason. The chamber will be more abstract, but everywhere else in the building there will be art and artistic finishes". Amassing the art collection of the new Constitutional Court has been a labour of love for Judge Albie Sachs.

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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.