Staff Reporter
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/ 28 February 2007

DA slams special treatment for Motata

The Democratic Alliance (DA) on Wednesday expressed its ire at the ”preferential treatment” extended to Pretoria High Court Judge Nkola Motata on Tuesday. Court officials had bent over backwards to ensure that Motata’s court hearing was shielded from the public, DA spokesperson Sheila Camerer said.

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/ 28 February 2007

UN: SA can meet poverty goals

South Africa can meet the United Nations’s Millennium Development Goals for children as long as it prioritises spending, the UN Children’s Fund country representative told Parliament on Wednesday. Macharia Kamau said South Africa had the finances available to reduce its child mortality rates by two-thirds and its maternal mortality by three-quarters.

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/ 28 February 2007

US invites Iran and Syria to talks on Iraq

The Bush administration gave up one of the central tenets of its Middle East strategy on Tuesday, reversing its much criticised effort to isolate Iran and Syria by inviting both states to negotiations on stabilising Iraq. The initiative will see the United States and Britain join Iraq and its neighbours in talks to try to rein in the country’s sectarian violence.

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/ 28 February 2007

Cape Town stadium delay criticised

Cape Town mayor Helen Zille is indulging in political grandstanding over the Green Point Stadium, mayoral committee member Simon Grindrod has suggested. He has also criticised what he says is the city’s ”inability to drive such a high-profile initiative”. In a statement issued on Wednesday, his office said he was extremely concerned at the latest halting of the project.

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/ 28 February 2007

NPA to seize cigarette baron’s assets

The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) has been given the go-ahead to seize assets worth millions of rands from a businessmen facing cigarette smuggling. NPA spokesperson Lucinda Moonieya said the case against Hendrik Delport was ”one of the biggest asset-forfeiture orders ever obtained in South Africa”.

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/ 28 February 2007

Gold rally looks set to continue

Standard Chartered Bank, the world’s biggest emerging-market bank with more than 60 000 employees in 56 countries, including South Africa, says gold’s recent rally is set to continue. Framed in the context of current dollar weakness, the gold rally looks set to continue heading higher.

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/ 28 February 2007

Check your odometer for the tax man

The South African Revenue Service (Sars) has advised taxpayers who earn a motor-vehicle allowance to record their odometer reading (mileage) on February 28, the end of the tax year for individual taxpayers. The reading will help individual taxpayers to fill in their logbooks accurately.