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/ 16 January 2004
Polio, which used to kill and disable many thousands of children every year, could be eradicated by the end of 2004 in one final last ambitious push to immunise 250-million children several times each.
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/ 16 January 2004
When the elephants fight, tusk to tusk, it is the grass — the ordinary people — that gets trampled. But where did the elephants get their tusks? In Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the elephants now sup at the same table. Since July a government of national unity, agreed during talks at Sun City, reigns over an uneasy, fractional peace.
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/ 16 January 2004
Leading psychologists are enraged at the appointment of Saths Cooper, formerly the controversial vice-chancellor of the University of Durban-Westville (UDW), to the newly formed board of the psychologists’ council. This took place despite Cooper’s failure to be democratically elected, they say.
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/ 16 January 2004
The South African tendency to overspend is keeping many children out of school. And the same weakness deprives many who make it into the classroom of essentials such as uniforms and books. Desperate to provide for their children, parents are flocking to loansharks — and digging themselves more deeply into debt.
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/ 16 January 2004
The US was accused on Thursday of trying to scupper the World Health Organisation’s guidelines designed to curb the rising epidemic of obesity and disease, which could be damaging to its food and drink corporations.
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/ 16 January 2004
The deaths of two journalists in an attack by an American tank and troops on the Palestine hotel in Baghdad were the result of ”criminal negligence”, for which Washington must bear at least some responsibility, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) said on Thursday.
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/ 16 January 2004
South Africa will have to import up to two million tonnes of maize this year to feed its population, largely as a result of drought, said Bully Botma, chairperson of Grain South Africa. South Africans consume five million tonnes of maize a year. Last year the country produced a surplus of 2,2-million tonnes of the grain.
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/ 16 January 2004
Every time I visit England I’m delighted at how much further English popular taste has degraded. It’s most encouraging to see the “dumbing down” of England is keeping to schedule, that the pandering to what the producers and proprietors no doubt believe is the generalised bog-level intelligence of their viewers, listeners and readers is kept on target.
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/ 16 January 2004
A lengthy disarmament programme has wrapped up in Sierra Leone, with organisers giving themselves a pat on the back. ”I think that the disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration of ex-combatants have been a success,” said Francis Kaikai, executive secretary of the programme.
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/ 16 January 2004
This year is shaping up as the year of prison reform in Swaziland, and Aids is the catalyst. ”It would be wrong to suggest that prisons are inhumane in Swaziland, but there is much room for improvement to make them safe from HIV infection, inmate abuse and other ills that are more or less endemic to African prisons,” said an officer with the Correctional Services.