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/ 24 February 2004

Model mistakes

TV Africa’s application for liquidation signaled the end of a US$57 million vision for a pan-African television network. Although funded in part by the World Bank’s IFC, the business model was fatally flawed. Kevin Bloom reports.

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/ 24 February 2004

Killing print’s numbers?

Do websites hurt print circulations? Websites are often singled out as one of the main culprits for falling print circulations. Simply put, the argument is why would readers bother to buy a newspaper if they can get the same publication for free over the net? Matthew Buckland tackles a question that has long confounded newspaper editors.

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/ 24 February 2004

Metrorail CEO thrown off track

The suspension of Metrorail CEO Honey Mateya and two senior executives last week has capped a simmering feud between Mateya and trade unions at the parastatal. Unions applaud Transnet CEO Maria Ramos’s decision to investigate parastatal’s senior executives who ‘lack vision’.

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/ 24 February 2004

Decline of the middle class

Everyone now accepts that poverty — whether actual destitution or state-aided, underclass misery — is a growing global phenomenon. Less well known is the fact that, globally, the middle class is struggling and declining. Margaret Legum comments on the uprush of how resources from poor to rich is weakening ‘society’s stable backbone’.

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/ 24 February 2004

Chinese heritage site is falling down

Two-thirds of the Great Wall of China has been destroyed by sightseers, developers and erosion, Beijing’s state-run media has reported in a warning that the world heritage site is crumbling out of existence. Survey teams are said to have found large new breaches in the ramparts, which are believed to have once stretched almost 6 400km.

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/ 24 February 2004

Of mice and money men

If Comcast’s takeover of the Disney Corporation goes ahead, the world’s biggest media conglomeration will be built around one of humankind’s most ancient practices. Investing animals with human characteristics is something we’ve been doing since we first applied charcoal to the walls of a cave.

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/ 24 February 2004

SA win toss, bowl first against New Zealand

South African captain Graeme Smith won the toss and chose to bowl first in the fourth one-day cricket international against New Zealand at Carisbrook on Tuesday. New Zealand made one change from the 11 who won by five runs in Wellington last Friday, resting Daryl Tuffey who has a knee injury and including paceman Michael Mason for his fourth one-day international.