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/ 27 November 2006
Rwanda moved on Monday to clear vestiges of French interests in the country after breaking all ties with Paris in a major diplomatic row stemming from the Central African nation’s 1994 genocide. As a 72-hour deadline for the French embassy to close its operations in Kigali neared, authorities also ordered Radio France International to halt its local broadcasts.
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/ 27 November 2006
Her department has no plans to grant maternity leave to pupils, Minister of Education Naledi Pandor said through her spokesperson on Monday. Responding to weekend media reports, Lunga Ngqengelele said in a statement that the department and Pandor never considered proposing a compulsory maternity leave.
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/ 27 November 2006
Church leaders in Zimbabwe attempted on Monday to head off a rift over a church report on the nation’s political and economic turmoil after priests of the Jesuit order alleged the report, issued last month, was censored by government agents. The Roman Catholic Bishops Conference said in a statement on Monday there were misunderstandings over the report.
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/ 27 November 2006
Former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was placed under house arrest on Monday in connection with the kidnap of two of his political opponents in 1974, a judicial source said. Pinochet, who ruled Chile with absolute power from 1973 to 1990, is accused of dozens of human rights violations but has never been brought to trial in connection with any of them.
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/ 27 November 2006
The owner of Cape Town’s Teazers nightclub, charged with shooting dead a street child for breaking into his car, told police he had thrown the firearm into the sea, the Cape High Court heard on Monday. Police inspector Kenneth Speed told the court this information turned out to be false.
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/ 27 November 2006
The South African Land Claims Commission is well behind targets for the redistribution of agricultural land, the Herald Online reported on Monday. It quoted chief land-claims commissioner Tozi Gwanya as saying about four million hectares of agricultural land had been distributed since 1998.
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/ 27 November 2006
There is an urgent need to integrate legislation for financial services within Southern African countries to curb cross-border financial fraud, the Financial Services Providers’ Ombudsman said on Monday. ”The harmonising of legislation across Southern African Development Community [SADC] countries must be accompanied by … enforcement,” ombudsman Charles Pillai said.
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/ 27 November 2006
The Democratic Alliance on Monday called for an urgent investigation into the Gautrain project, suggesting the Auditor General lead it. This follows weekend reports that two Cabinet ministers, among others, are among the shareholders of a consortium tasked with the already controversial Gautrain project.
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/ 27 November 2006
A young South African was on Monday fined by a local court for playing hooky from work and trying to cover it with a fake gynaecologist’s certificate attesting he was pregnant and needed a week off. A magistrate’s court in Vereeniging, near Johannesburg, fined 27-year-old Charles Sibindana R1Â 000 for the brazen forgery, the media reported.
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/ 27 November 2006
Last-ditch attempts by religious groups to block the controversial Civil Union Bill suffered another blow on Monday when the National Council of Provinces’ social-services committee gave it the green light. Following an exhaustive public hearing process on the measure, the committee voted in favour of the legislation, defying calls for the Bill to be either abolished or revised.