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/ 4 December 2006
Being called a "hard-nosed sceptic" is one of the greatest compliments you can receive as a journalist or economic commentator. To be described thus by the president of the country is a rare honour — and I am not engaging in the searing sarcasm the president has visited on those he deems out of line.
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/ 4 December 2006
Democratic Alliance deputy leader Joe Seremane claims that he keeps in his car a list of senior blacks who would have formed the future leadership of the DA — all of whom have since left the party. DA leader Tony Leon has also said the party invested a lot in grooming black leadership, with few results. But why should they stay?
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/ 4 December 2006
A friend of mine called me from a police precinct the other day. He said it was the last call he was making before being locked up for domestic violence. He is a reasonable guy at the best of times. Never in the many years that I have known and socialised with him has he been violent, not even against other men.
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/ 4 December 2006
”In the endgame,” said one of the world’s best-ever chess players, Jose Raul Capablanca, ”don’t think in terms of moves but in terms of plans.” The situation in Iraq is now unravelling into the bloodiest endgame imaginable. Both popular and official support for the war in those countries that ordered the invasion is already at a low and will only get lower.
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/ 4 December 2006
Latoya* (17) is confident and articulate. ”I want future generations to see us as leaders, not as followers, because then they will become leaders as well.” She is talking about the Our Own Stories in Our Own Voices project, which takes 45 young women, some of whom are survivors of violence and abuse, and teaches them to document their experiences on film.
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/ 4 December 2006
You have to hand it to Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir — unlike most strongmen in the world, he at least has a sense of occasion. This week, while holding a live press conference from Sudan — with reporters from Washington, London, Paris, Moscow, Cairo, Beirut and Pretoria, who joined in by video link — he found it necessary to accuse ”the media [of] spreading false information”.
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/ 4 December 2006
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez stormed to a re-election victory in Sunday’s vote, handing him an ample mandate to broaden his promised socialist revolution and challenge Washington’s influence in Latin America. Chávez told cheering supporters at his presidential palace late Sunday his landslide was a blow to United States President George Bush’s administration.
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/ 4 December 2006
Say hello to the burkini — a swimming costume designed for Muslim women. It is a semi-fitting two-piece swimsuit that connects to an “ahiida hijood” and it will be worn by Australian Muslim lifesavers from January. Sydney designer Aheda Zanetti came up with the design after Surf Life Saving Australia began a drive to recruit more Islamic lifeguards.
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/ 4 December 2006
An unusually well-preserved 65-million-year-old dinosaur nest containing fossil eggs sold in an auction for nearly 000. Auction house Bonhams & Butterfields had estimated the raptoid nest would go for between 000 and 000, auction officials said.
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/ 4 December 2006
Peace can never be taken for granted, and the first responsibility of any government is security. That is why France wishes to contribute to a political structuring of the world that averts perils. It wishes to help in the exercise of shared responsibility within the framework of strong, legitimate and accepted international institutions, writes Jacques Chirac, the president of France.