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/ 2 November 2006
Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula and several Cabinet colleagues in his cluster will meet with the Big Business Working Group on Friday to discuss their joint programme to fight crime. The meeting in Johannesburg comes only weeks after the two groups agreed on ways to fight crime.
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/ 2 November 2006
The Sunday Times has a ”revolutionary plan” to start a free daily newspaper, to be launched by March next year, media analyst Anton Harber says on his blog. The paper will apparently be delivered for free to Sunday Times subscribers — a unique way of launching a free newspaper.
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/ 2 November 2006
Europe is facing an obesity epidemic by the end of the decade, which will increase health costs and hamper economic development, health experts said on Thursday. Up to 23% of men and as many as 36% of women in Europe are obese, and one third of children are overweight.
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/ 2 November 2006
Renaming the Union Buildings — the seat of government in Pretoria — could take years, said the Ministry of Arts and Culture on Thursday. ”That could, as in the case of the OR Tambo [International airport] name change, take up to three years,” said ministry spokesperson Sandile Memela.
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/ 2 November 2006
A state funeral for ex-president PW Botha is an insult to African people, the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) said on Thursday. Botha died on Tuesday, aged 90. ”The offer to give PW Botha a state funeral is naked appeasement to the forces of apartheid. It is … an insult to the intelligence of the African people,” said PAC MP Motsoko Pheko.
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/ 2 November 2006
It is interesting to contrast the two major organisations involved in the running of South African soccer. The Premier Soccer League, under the expert guidance of Trevor Phillips, has become a well-oiled, profitable machine. The South African Football Association, on the other hand, is a shambles of mediocrity, arrogance and indifference.
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/ 2 November 2006
British Prime Minister Tony Blair strutted into the fashion world on Tuesday — then revealed that his attempts to cut a dash in the beachwear range proved a disaster. Blair, normally a man for a sober suit-and-tie combination, lifted the lid on his fashion hell as he attended the opening of the Fashion Retail Academy’s new home in London.
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/ 2 November 2006
A Canadian man marked the 80th anniversary of the death of magician Harry Houdini on Tuesday by escaping from a sealed glass-and-metal box containing two tonnes of wet cement, according to reports. Dean Gunnarson was handcuffed, his body wrapped in chains and his cell locked shut with six padlocks.
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/ 2 November 2006
A total of 79 garden gnomes snatched by a so-called gnome-liberation group were discovered on Wednesday along the banks of a stream in France’s central Limousin region, police said. The gnomes were hidden in underbrush with a banner that read "Gnome mistreated, gnome liberated", police said.
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/ 2 November 2006
South Korea’s "fashion police", who prowled the streets in the 1970s measuring the length of women’s skirts, will soon officially be consigned to oblivion. Showing too much skin in public places will no longer be classed as indecent exposure and will be deleted from the Minor Offence Act, the National Police Agency has said.