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/ 23 October 2003
The JSE Securities Exchange South Africa (JSE) retreated like a fox chased by a pack of hounds on Thursday morning as weak world markets and a strong rand took their toll. Basket-selling by futures players added to the bourse’s weakness. At 12.01pm, the all-share and all-share industrial indices were down 1,35% and 1,01% respectively.
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/ 23 October 2003
Martin Mubanga’s parents have changed his schools twice this year, because his class got too large, 15 pupils. ”What’s the point of sending your child to an expensive school if it’s going to be crowded,” says his mother Elizabeth.
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/ 23 October 2003
Democratic Alliance MP Vincent Gore confirmed on Thursday that he had sent a letter to President Thabo Mbeki requesting him not to sign the Postal Services Amendment Bill into law. The party — mirroring courier industry complaints — says that the Bill could affect the business of couriers in the under-1kg parcel and letter market.
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/ 23 October 2003
South Africa has world-class financial architecture but faces the conundrum that the majority of the poor do not have access to these globally competitive financial services. With more than six in 10 South Africans classified as "unbanked", the challenge is to localise services while continuing to be globally competitive.
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/ 23 October 2003
Two former anti-apartheid activists are to testify before the Hefer commission on Thursday during its fourth day of public hearings in Bloemfontein. Commission secretary John Bacon said Letha Jolobe and Advocate Glenn Goosen would be called to the stand.
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/ 23 October 2003
The Pretoria High Court has ruled against Telkom in its bid to have the sale, distribution and use of Leased-Cost Routing (LCR) equipment prohibited. Least cost routing systems enable customers to connect GSM-based equipment to a PABX which can then take advantage of the better call rates offered when dialling from one cellular device to another.
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/ 23 October 2003
Disgruntled Airports Company South Africa (Acsa) employees may well go on strike on October 27, the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (Satawu) said on Wednesday. This decision follows months of wage negotiations between Acsa and the union.
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/ 23 October 2003
Rwanda has beaten Sweden by getting the highest proportion of women into Parliament, voting them on to 39 seats in the lower chamber of deputies, a level amounting to 48.8% of the seats. In the voting, which began on September 30, women won 15 of the seats that were also open to men.
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/ 23 October 2003
The desert city of Timbuktu, where French President Jacques Chirac arrives on Friday during a visit to West Africa, has been a synonym for romance and exoticism for generations. The 17th-century chronicler and historian Abderahman Saadi called the oasis on the edge of the Sahara desert ”exquisite, pure, delicious, illustrious, a blessed city, fertile and lovely”.
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/ 23 October 2003
A -million lawsuit has been filed against the designer, marketer and a retailer of the video game series Grand Theft Auto by the families of two people shot by teenagers allegedly inspired by the game. Aaron Hamel was killed and Kimberly Bede was seriously wounded when their cars were shot at in June as they passed through the Great Smoky Mountains.