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/ 10 November 2006

Chávez takes off on a four-hour flight of rhetoric

On the podium is a map of the world, a map of Venezuela and a desk piled with charts, reports, books and pens: essential navigational tools for a tour through the mind of Hugo Chávez. The Venezuelan president is three weeks away from an election and has assembled Cabinet ministers, aides and journalists at the presidential palace, Miraflores, for a rhetorical journey.

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/ 9 November 2006

UKZN wins right for ARV trial on babies

The University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) has won a high court application for the go-ahead of a clinical trial that will give an anti-retroviral drug to breastfeeding babies, marking another appearance in court for the n-word — nevirapine. The researchers, headed by Professor Jerry Coovadia, plan to give nevirapine or a placebo randomly to about 1 100 breastfeeding newborns for a six-month period.

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/ 9 November 2006

Public Protector rules on breaches

The Public Protector has found that a failure by the Social Development Minister, Zola Skweyiya, to disclose an interest-free loan granted by Imvume chief executive officer Sandi Majali to his wife constituted a breach of the executive ethics code but his wife’s acceptance of the loan by itself did not.

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/ 9 November 2006

New book spooks Leon

Tony Leon has threatened to launch a libel lawsuit against a British historian who raised questions about his proximity to the apartheid intelligence establishment during his time as a conscript in the defence force. James Sanders, a London-based researcher, has sent Leon draft pages of his forthcoming book, <i>Apartheid’s Friends: The Rise and Fall of South Africa’s Secret Service</i>.

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/ 9 November 2006

A road map for the case against Zuma

"I can’t believe it," Shabir Shaik reportedly exclaimed after the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) dismissed his petition against conviction on two counts of corruption and one of fraud. "Boom, boom, boom; one, two, three: they didn’t uphold anything. All the lawyers were wrong about what was going to happen."

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/ 9 November 2006

Skilled foreigners tied up in red tape

A number of South African firms refuse to employ skilled foreigners because of nightmarish immigration bureaucracy, say recruiting agents and immigration experts. This despite an immigration law that the department of home affairs amended last week to help firms combat the domestic skills shortage by employing skilled foreigners.