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/ 23 December 2006

PAC sees little reason for Christmas cheer

Most South African families face a bleak festive season due to economic hardship caused by unemployment, the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) said on Friday. ”The challenge is for us to join forces with workers and their unions to push for fair employment conditions, pay and respect for labour,” said PAC president Letlapa Mphahlele.

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/ 23 December 2006

The finest new bike of the year

Being selected as just one magazine’s bike of the year is a very worthwhile achievement, but when 15 of the world’s leading motorcycle publications vote your product the finest new bike of the year by an outstanding margin, you know you’ve done things right. This year’s International Bike of the Year competition saw the Triumph Daytona 675 claim the top spot with 26 votes — more than double the 11 scored by the second-placed Yamaha YZF-R6.

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/ 23 December 2006

Huge Christmas gift for tiny Spanish village

A remote Spanish farming village with 25 inhabitants was on Friday several million euros richer after everybody in the village won a share of the top prize in the world’s biggest lottery, El Gordo. The church bells rang in Rebollo de Duero, in the central province of Soria, on Friday as the handful of farming families celebrated their good fortune.

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/ 23 December 2006

Old allegiances crumble in Palestine

Zuhair Abu Latifa’s toy shop is the first in a row of shops inside the Qalandia refugee camp, not far from the tall concrete wall that cuts off the occupied West Bank from Jerusalem. It is a single street in a tightly connected community, but it cuts across the entire spectrum of Palestinian politics.

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/ 23 December 2006

Don’t forget travel insurance

Festive-season travellers are paranoid about losing their luggage and many take insurance to cover this. But few of them realise how expensive it could be if one gets ill when travelling abroad. Medical cover can cost you as little as R230 for a two-week holiday, which will pay out up to R7,5-million in medical costs.

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/ 23 December 2006

Sea level may rise more than 1m by 2100

Ocean levels will rise faster than expected if greenhouse-gas emissions continue to rise, a leading German researcher warns. Using Nasa data, Stefan Rahmstorf, professor of physics of the oceans at the University of Potsdam near Berlin, estimates that the sea level could rise by 140cm by 2100.