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/ 11 December 2006
Many of Britain’s big businesses — including supermarkets, banks, universities, hotel chains, hospitals and government departments — would be forced to sign up to a carbon trading scheme under proposals being drafted by ministers. The scheme has received an initial enthusiastic response from some of the companies.
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/ 11 December 2006
A case in which online casino operators challenged a ban on internet gambling was thrown out of court last week. But experts question whether the judgement of the Pretoria High Court is enforceable. It has also emerged that the National Gambling Board, one of the defendants, has submitted a report to the minister of trade and industry recommending the legalisation and taxation of internet gambling.
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/ 11 December 2006
Outside the depleted ranks of the United States’s neoconservatives, few tears are likely to be shed over John Bolton’s resignation as US ambassador to the United Nations. Bolton’s political fate was effectively sealed, like that of Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon, when the Republicans suffered their crippling defeat in the Congressional elections last month.
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/ 11 December 2006
A shift of vocabulary can be the harbinger of a new understanding. The notable increase in recent weeks in the use of the term “civil war” to describe what is happening in Iraq — which has included powerful statements from Kofi Annan and King Abdullah of Jordan — may prove significant.
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/ 11 December 2006
The latest figures from the annual Finscope survey by FinMark Trust show a positive picture for banking in South Africa. The number of people banked has increased from 46,6% last year to 51%, with the biggest increase among the lower-income earners. According to the survey, 800 000 people have entered the financial services arena and Mzansi (the low-income, low-cost bank account) has been hailed as a success.
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/ 11 December 2006
Space agency Nasa recently unveiled plans to build a permanent base on the moon within 20 years that will allow humans to live there. The base will be used as a launching site for missions to Mars, as well as for analysis of the Earth from space. ”We’re going for a base on the moon,” said Scott Horowitz, Nasa associate administrator for exploration.
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/ 11 December 2006
Widespread insecurity in eastern Chad is putting a severe strain on humanitarian operations, with rebel activity rendering large parts of the terrain impassable. Aid workers were already struggling to cope with 230 000 refugees as well as 90 000 internally displaced Chadians, when rebels stepped up their offensives in the area two weeks ago.
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/ 11 December 2006
I have a good dose of melanin, making me one of the darker people prowling the streets of Johannesburg. I was born and brought up in Kenya. I carry a Kenyan passport and have official recognition as a Kenyan citizen. I can vote, run for political office and join the Kenyan army — if I want to. I love ugali, the Kenyan, harder version of pap.
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/ 11 December 2006
There are rumours that treasury boss Dr Herbert Murerwa and central bank chief Dr Gideon Gono are at one each other’s throats. They reportedly regularly have SMS wars, with a defiant Gono reminding his boss that they are ”working for the same government, and that he [Murerwa] should be patriotic and listen to him,” treasury insiders say.
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/ 11 December 2006
In a slick, glass television studio in an office block on the southern outskirts of Paris, a new front in the war on ”Anglo-Saxon” cultural imperialism opened up recently. President Jacques Chirac’s decade-old dream of a ”CNN Ã la Francaise” to rival BBC World and United States 24-hour news channels is finally to launch after years of wrangling and in-fighting, promising a revolution in world news.