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/ 9 February 2004
China is under pressure to abandon its rigid currency regime, after finance ministers from the world’s leading economies blamed Beijing’s dollar peg for recent ”excess volatility” in exchange rate markets.
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/ 9 February 2004
South African editors are to seek a meeting with the Department of Foreign Affairs to express concern over the recent court ruling that has closed the Daily News in Zimbabwe. Henry Jeffreys, chairperson of the South African National Editors’ Forum, strongly condemned the ruling and called for urgent reconsideration of the judgement.
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/ 9 February 2004
South African President Thabo Mbeki said on Sunday he was anxious that political rivals in neighbouring Zimbabwe start formal talks soon, adding that a programme mapping out the negotiating process had already been completed in December.
The death of Zimbabwean journalism
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/ 9 February 2004
<img src="http://www.mg.co.za/ContentImages/41909/10-X-Logo.gif" align=left>"We do have different policies from other parties — on women and child abuse, for example, and on the environment. We’re disappointed there’s no concerted campaign by all party leaders to dispel the myth that baby rape cures Aids." Drew Forrest turns his 10-shooter on Independent Democrats leader Patricia de Lille.
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/ 9 February 2004
The former United Nations chief weapons inspector Hans Blix weighed into the controversy over weapons of mass destruction on Sunday when he accused Tony Blair and George Bush of behaving like insincere salesmen who ”exaggerated” intelligence in an attempt to win support for war.
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/ 9 February 2004
The White House on Sunday tried to shore up George Bush’s credibility with an election charm offensive, engineering the president’s first appearance on a Sunday morning television chatshow to defend his war record — not only in Iraq but also during Vietnam.
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/ 9 February 2004
Attempts to tie foreign direct investment (FDI) to development objectives are falling away across the world as competition for FDI intensifies, a United Nations study has indicated. The research shows that middle-income countries have been forced to relax their imposition of performance requirements on FDI, either by making them voluntary rather than mandatory or scrapping them altogether.
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/ 9 February 2004
Scientists have discovered a protein in monkeys that can block infection by the virus that causes Aids. The team, from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in the United States, hope their work could lead to new ways to prevent humans being infected with HIV.
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/ 9 February 2004
McCarthy Call-a-Car, the largest independent online used-vehicle retailer in South Africa and a subsidiary of listed motor retailer McCarthy, sold 6 662 units in 2003 — representing more than R660-million-worth in sales. A total of 61% of transactions were done through the internet, an achievement on par with international trends.
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/ 9 February 2004
Monsanto, the world’s largest genetically modified seed company, has been awarded patents on the wheat used for making chapatis — the flat-bread staple of northern India. The patents give the United States multinational exclusive ownership over Nap Hal, a strain of wheat whose gene sequence makes it particularly suited to producing crisp breads.