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/ 6 February 2004
Bafana Bafana has managed to regress in the African Cup of Nations (Afcon) – from winners in 1996 to a first-round exit this year. The tournament left the South African team battered, beleaguered and bruised. They returned home on Friday to lick their wounds.
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/ 6 February 2004
Europe is the world’s largest exporter of white sugar, even though it costs twice as much for European producers to grow the stuff as farmers in poor countries. The high prices European consumers pay for sugar subsidises European exports, which destroy the livelihoods of more efficient farmers abroad.
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/ 6 February 2004
A strike by more than 70 000 supermarket staff in California is intensifying, with a policy of civil disobedience and the intervention of everyone from religious leaders and Hollywood stars to right-wing think tanks. The outcome of the strike is seen as crucial to the future of the union movement.
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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.