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/ 6 February 2004
Businesses are using corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a shield behind which to campaign against environmental and human rights regulations, warns a report published recently. Christian Aid claims CSR in some cases worsens relations between business and local communities.
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/ 6 February 2004
Zimbabwe’s land seizures have escalated with the government’s confiscation of the country’s largest sugar producer, Hippo Valley. The vast estate in the south-eastern corner of the country annually produces 236 000 tonnes of sugar, said to be worth about R519-million.
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/ 6 February 2004
South African parliamentary Speaker Frene Ginwala’s second term in the job is about to expire, and she is unlikely to take up a third. But she may end up as Speaker of the Pan African Parliament (PAP), in the formation of which she has played a key role.
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/ 6 February 2004
”In her address to the World Social Forum in India earlier this year, Arundhati Roy picked a few bones with the world’s only superpower. She is in good company. But in her polemic Roy links the US to every evil under the sun and ends her tour de force of the human condition in the current world order on a chilling note.” Jo Lorentzen and Imraan Valodia respond.
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/ 6 February 2004
The presence of world-class footballers in Africa is a surprise, judging by the figures from a recent survey of migration of African footballers to Europe. A huge land mass, in a part of the world with a strong football culture, is nothing more than a desert when it comes to developing players for football’s global market.
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/ 6 February 2004
The end of the most pervasive product of the 20th century may come sooner than expected. World production of plastic bags is at an all-time high, but an additive developed in the United Kingdom is said to be reducing their lifespan from decades to just a few months.
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/ 6 February 2004
An independent commission on the September 11 2001 terror attacks, established along similar lines to the intelligence inquiry announced by the United States White House this week, has been dogged by a constant struggle between the investigators and the Republican administration, which the commission regularly accuses of hampering its work.
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/ 6 February 2004
Spain’s bruising general election campaign took another bitter turn this week when the parties began rowing over the civil war. Right-wing Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar called on the Socialist Party leader, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, to order his campaign team to stop making references to the conflict that killed at least half a million people.
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/ 6 February 2004
The contentious topic of abortion in Kenya was revisited this week during events to mark African Women’s Health and Rights Day. The procedure is currently banned in the East African country. However, women’s groups are urging the government to open a debate on this policy.
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/ 6 February 2004
Fierce controversy has erupted over the International Criminal Court (ICC) announcement of a possible probe into war crimes committed by rebels of Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in the course of the country’s 18-year civil war.