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/ 4 November 2006
Threats of bloody retribution and accusations of American involvement erupted across Pakistan’s tribal areas this week after the missile strike that killed 80 people in a radical madrasa. About 20Â 000 tribesmen crowded into Khar, about 10km from the school, which was shredded by air strikes on Monday. Cries of ”Down with America” rang out as radical clerics addressed the turbaned protesters, many of whom brandished Kalashnikovs or rocket launchers.
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/ 4 November 2006
Historic talks between the Swazi government and the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) on the country’s political system came to a halt this week when the government invited intelligence officers from the Royal Swaziland Police to attend the talks. The talks were initiated after the NCA, circulated a petition last week criticising the country’s new constitution, which came into effect in February this year.
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/ 4 November 2006
After his landslide victory in last Sunday’s runoff election, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva promised that his first step would be to push through political reforms, and underlined that the poor would remain the top priority in his second term, which begins on January 1.
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/ 4 November 2006
The Gauteng government’s public transport summit, convened by its Transport Minister Ignatius Jacobs this week, was a crude bluff. In the context of failed taxi recapitalisation, a bungled car-pool-lane experiment, a Gautrain project plagued with glitches and, most importantly, heightened debate about the necessity for public transport, the summit missed the opportunity to grapple with the mobility needs of Gauteng citizens.
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/ 3 November 2006
Now that the posturing and rhetoric that has dominated Western Cape politics in the two months prior to this week’s agreed compromise on the system of local government is over there is one clear victor: the citizens of Cape Town. The decision has been hailed by various commentators as ”mature”, and by the local media as ”the kind of compromise that good politicians make in the interests of the people they serve”.
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/ 3 November 2006
Thuli Makhubu, the Mail & Guardian’s receptionist, is a few weeks away from giving birth to her second child. Sameer Mehta, her ”husband” of two years, whom she found out about two weeks ago, is in hiding, being protected from her wrath by the department of home affairs.
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/ 3 November 2006
The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) may suspend its call for Manto Tshabalala-Msimang to quit as health minister — if the government "shows the leadership on HIV/Aids we have been asking for over the past five years". TAC general secretary Sipho Mthathi made this declaration after a remarkable week in which Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka and Deputy Health Minister Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge pledged to work with Aids organisations to fight HIV.
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/ 3 November 2006
The Directorate of Special Operations of the National Prosecuting Authority has raided two homes of former Limpopo premier Ngoako Ramatlhodi, he said in a statement on Friday. The raids relate to allegations made against him with respect to alleged corruption in Limpopo, he said.
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/ 3 November 2006
The pilot of a light aircraft was killed when his plane crashed into a house north of Durban on Friday afternoon. Witnesses at Sgodiphola, 40km north of Tongaat on the R614 road to Greytown, said the plane was already in flames before it hit the house in foggy weather. It is believed that the aircraft took off from Virginia airport in Durban.
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/ 3 November 2006
A witness in the trial of a white Zimbabwean security expert, Michael Hitschmann, has claimed the man planned to kill four prominent businessmen as a bad-taste birthday present for President Robert Mugabe, it was reported on Friday. The four were ruling-party businessmen and officials based in the cities of Mutare and Bulawayo.