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/ 30 January 2004

A good honest car at a good honest price

Kia’s new Shuma 1,8 Sport isn’t the quickest car around, and it doesn’t have the solid feel of some of the more expensive cars on the overcrowded South African market, but it enjoys a huge advantage in the one area that affects most of us — price. The Shuma is the cheapest 1,8 litre family saloon available, writes Gavin Foster.

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/ 30 January 2004

SA petrol price to increase by 30 cents

The retail price of leaded 93 octane, unleaded 93 octane, unleaded 95, leaded 97 octane and unleaded petrol is to increase by 30 cents a litre on February 4, the Department of Mineral and Energy said on Friday. There will be a 22c/l increase in the wholesale price of sulphur diesel 0,3% and a 21c/l increase in sulphur diesel 0,05% on the same date.

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/ 30 January 2004

The seven-hour itch

The manner in which this newspaper wrote the news before it happened last week (“The day rape was raped”, or, as it turned out, “The day after rape might have been seduced”) had nothing on the frenzy of pre-emptive journalism in the press box at Newlands on Sunday night.

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/ 30 January 2004

Let’s dump the matric ritual

This is the seventh straight year that I have been in South Africa at matric time –either while students are frantically preparing for it as if their lives depended on the results, or while the results are being publicised, scrutinised and criticised in the press and other public forums with great drama. Both have become institutionalised cultural rituals that South Africa would best abandon.

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/ 30 January 2004

Talking peace, making war

After fighting the longest civil war in Africa, the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) is now fuming over the delay in negotiations aimed at ending the conflict.
Talks in the Kenyan town of Nairasha have been postponed until February 17 to allow Muslim negotiators such as Vice-President Ali Osman Mohamed Taha to attend the hajj.

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/ 30 January 2004

A little problem of ethnicity

For a meeting in which adversaries agreed on nothing more than to meet again, the talks between Burundian President Domitien Ndayizeye and the last rebel group under arms has been getting rave reviews. The warring Burundian forces have agreed to set aside differences and work at building trust.

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/ 30 January 2004

Kallis redux

Cricket sage Hylton Ackerman has the knack of hitting more nails on the head than most, but there was an air of naïve redundancy in his on-air praise of Jacques Kallis this week. In almost subversive tones, as if postulating a notion that was revolutionary and risky,

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/ 30 January 2004

A Feder-al state

With his graceful stroke-play, Roger Federer is already a trendsetter for tennis’s new, anti-baseline-bashing generation. Of the four men’s semifinalists at this year’s Australian Open only Federer has never been the world number one — if he beats Juan Carlos Ferrero, he will become the 23rd man to reach this pinnacle since 1973.

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/ 30 January 2004

Chelsea drawn towards Gunners fire

When the Football Association urged clubs to field their strongest teams in the FA Cup this week, there was one tie the governing body would not have been worrying about. Arsenal and Chelsea have been drawn to meet at Highbury for a quarterfinal place and it can be taken as read that neither will be putting out a reserve side.