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/ 27 January 2004
The epidemic of bird flu in south-east Asia has spread to Pakistan, with senior officials revealing that the virus has killed millions of chickens in the port city of Karachi in recent weeks. A six-year-old Thai boy died of the disease in Bangkok on Monday, raising the epidemic’s confirmed human death toll to seven.
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/ 27 January 2004
Of all birds, the albatross is perhaps the most enigmatic – mystical even. Sean Zintl talks to a crusty seaman who has taken to the high seas for a year to raise awareness about the dire plight of the world’s albatrosses — and how easy it could be to save them from extinction
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/ 27 January 2004
I would like to thank the <i>Mail & Guardian</i> for the attention it has given to the drought and to respond to issues raised in your recent editorial ("A water-stressed future"). In particular, I would like to respond to your statement that "what is politically blameworthy is the failure to provide for drought in a water-scarce country … "
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/ 27 January 2004
Executive airline Sun Air will cap its first year under new ownership with a profit, a new investment partner and expansion plans. General manager Robalt Keselder confirmed that a European investor has bought into the airline, "but would not like to be identified at this stage".
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/ 27 January 2004
The entry of a new low-fare airline, and the price war that has erupted between budget carriers, may lead to "someone getting hurt", John Morrison, CEO of the Airline Association of Southern Africa warned last week. Morrison’s comments came as a new airline, 1Time, started selling tickets for the Johannesburg to Cape Town route.
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/ 27 January 2004
As in Lewis Carroll’s <i>Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland</i>, nothing is ever as it appears on the surface in what one journalistic wag has nicknamed "Mugabeland". This is Zimbabwe, the politically and economically tattered Southern African country President Robert Mugabe has straddled like a Colossus since independence in in 1980.
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/ 27 January 2004
The World Social Forum (WSF) took a historic step in moving from Brazil to India this year, but there is plenty of room for improvement, say activists, convinced that the global gathering should head to Africa in 2006. Delegates at the forum have welcomed suggestions of an African city as host
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/ 27 January 2004
”Remember that guy, the one who was married!” one cried. ”My mother ran into the love of her life at a conference and nearly left my father,” another friend added quietly. ”I left my bag in his boot,” someone confessed. And the winner: ”I shagged him in the conference room.”
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/ 27 January 2004
There is a dispiriting resemblance between recent news about former Yugoslavia and news about Iraq, the two places that bracket the modern era of intervention. Several factors suggest the necessity not only for reform, but for a new modesty
in the West’s approach to intervention.
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/ 27 January 2004
A heated debate is underway in Swaziland about whether children who fail English should be forced to repeat the academic year. ”The English language requirement is a millstone around the neck of every Swazi school child,” says Agnes Khumalo, a public school teacher in the northern Hhohho province.