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/ 10 October 2003
This week the UN took to the streets of Rio, New York, Cairo and Nairobi to announce the arrival of the "new urban revolution". The explosive growth of world cities in the past few decades, it said, has left more than 900-million people in slums, with the probability that twice as many more will live in insanitary, overcrowded, unofficial settlements within 30 years.
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/ 10 October 2003
The "war on terror" has weakened national arms controls and fuelled the proliferation of conventional weapons, a coalition of leading human rights charities warned yesterday. Launching a campaign to regulate the arms trade, Amnesty International, Oxfam, and the International Network on Small Arms said about 500 000 people were killed each year by armed violence — roughly one victim a minute.
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/ 10 October 2003
When Hollywood writes the script, logic goes out of the window. Fifteen women moaning about being groped by an outsize actor from Austria is not going to make a blind bit of difference to what the electorate really thinks it wants. Matshikiza comments on the unlikely proceedings of the Californian gubernatorial race.
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/ 10 October 2003
It would be funny were it not so cruel — the behaviour of the rand, that is. The Springbok is now behaving like a bull in the china shop that is our carefully, sometimes too carefully, managed economy. Except that the delicate ware it is wrecking is economic growth and people’s livelihood.
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/ 10 October 2003
Tonight, after Australia have beaten Argentina, I shall walk in to the Leederville Hotel in Perth wearing only an England jersey. Oh, and the same pair of tracksuit trousers I’ve been wearing for the past two weeks. I’m not a good packer. I will make this gesture to expose the sham of this World Cup.
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/ 10 October 2003
If ever there was a chance to start with a bang then Rudolf Straeuli had to pick Schalk Burger, not Rossouw, and his fullback should have been Jaco van der Westhuyzen, not the hopelessly over praised Werner Greeff. It won’t matter, of course, for Uruguay will be duly beaten, but England are next and if the coach is keeping his powder dry for that match then he is wrong to do so.
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/ 10 October 2003
How would you feel if you got into work to discover the cleaner had been sacked to save money, leaving you and your colleagues to do the dishes? Not very happy or very productive, according to a recent survey that said small business employers were alienating employees through inappropriate cost-cutting schemes.
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/ 10 October 2003
The black economic empowerment charter for financial services, likely to be released next week, has already stirred up a hornet’s nest for being "elitist". The charter, an effort to deepen black management and ownership of the R800-billion sector and to bank the unbanked poor, is likely to go down as one of the key economic policy moments of the past decade.
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/ 10 October 2003
In a response to mounting government pressure on the financial services sector, Absa and FirstRand this week lifted the wraps on major empowerment initiatives.
FirstRand unveiled a procurement-driven strategy, while Absa launched a R250-million fund to help aspiring entrepreneurs.
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/ 10 October 2003
South African peace brokers saw last week that even when you are able to press a man hard enough to sign you cannot make him sing while he’s doing it. The tuneless ceremony at the presidential guest house in Pretoria told the story as Burundian President Ndayizeye and rebel leader Nkurunziza came together.