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/ 20 December 2006
School is out and the sun is blazing in Soweto, but 12-year-old Phumlane Kubheka has serious work to do. Glancing around nervously, he grips the blue float in both hands, takes a deep breath and plunges his head into the water. Kubheka is learning to swim.
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/ 20 December 2006
From the postman to the mayor, nearly everyone grows Christmas trees in the sleepy Hungarian hamlet of Surd in a long-held tradition that has guaranteed economic survival even in hard times. Local lore says that Surd, population 650, produces enough Christmas trees to supply half of the capital Budapest’s two million residents.
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/ 20 December 2006
The number of residents in New York City could put such a strain on its infrastructure by 2030 that the demand for power exceeds the supply, housing becomes scarce and rush hour lasts all day because of an overwhelmed transit network. Mayor Michael Bloomberg warned that the city of 8,2-million people must start planning now for the expected population growth of another million over the next 25 years.
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/ 20 December 2006
Iraq and the election, Israel and Hezbollah, George Allen and George Bush, Mel Gibson and Madonna: the people, issues, images and absurdities of 2006 were inescapable, playing over and over before our eyes. It was all on YouTube — all in that index-card-sized, pixellated box.
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/ 20 December 2006
Who scores a D for leadership? Whose strength is her frankness? Whose department did move to clean up some of the mess of past years in 2006? Who is a pragmatist either in hiding or deluded about the power of the state? The Mail & Guardian presents its yearly, no-holds-barred Cabinet report card.
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/ 20 December 2006
As the year draws to a close, prospects for constitutional reform remain ”bleak” in the view of Egypt’s fragmented opposition, who continue to accuse the governing National Democratic Party of operating a ”police state”. Despite promises of reform and constitutional amendments put forward by the NDP, the coming year promises to be complicated and troublesome.
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/ 20 December 2006
Nestled in London’s business district, Smithfield, one of Britain’s oldest markets, is gearing up for Christmas and New Year with turkeys, geese and organic chickens selling rapidly. Once the historic wholesale meat market opens at 3am, Smithfield comes alive with the hustle and bustle of traders, as it has done for centuries.
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/ 20 December 2006
A new species of orchid with beetroot-red leaves and a white flower has been discovered growing just below the summit of the highest peak in the Cederberg Mountains. A member of the genus Disa, the orchid was first spotted and photographed in 2004 by a Cape Nature field ranger, Jonah Zimri, and two of his colleagues.
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/ 20 December 2006
More than 21 000 people have been evacuated in Malaysia’s southern Johor state after continuous rains, causing what officials say are the worst floods in years. ”So far 21 742 people have been evacuated from eight districts in Johor. There have been no casualties,” Adnan Mohamad Yassin, an officer in the state’s relief centre, said.
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/ 20 December 2006
There are two ways of writing the story of Elizabeth Bolden. The first is to say that she had a very long life. She died in December, aged 116, passing on the mantle of the world’s oldest person to a man from Puerto Rico. Seen this way, you marvel at the endurance of a woman who was born in the year that Wyoming became the 44th state of the union.