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/ 27 November 2006
Since their election victory last January, Hamas leaders have come under fierce United States and European pressure to moderate their rejectionist stance and cut a deal with the moderate Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas. But now the squeeze on Ehud Olmert’s government is also growing as the "international community", fearing a region-wide implosion, gears up for another drive for peace.
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/ 27 November 2006
The campaign to ensure that Jacob Zuma succeeds Thabo Mbeki as president of South Africa has produced a virus that threatens the health of many of our key democratic institutions. The executive, the National Prosecuting Authority, the press and the judiciary have all fallen to the attack — and the coherence of the ruling party, itself a key to the success of our peaceful transition to constitutional democracy, has been shaken.
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/ 27 November 2006
More than a million Gautengers — one in six adults — run small businesses ranging from survivalist street hawking to sophisticated and fast-Âgrowing enterprises, a survey has found. Finscope project manager Darrell Beghin says the survey found there was an increasing vibrancy in Gauteng’s small-business sector.
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/ 27 November 2006
Anti-corruption activist Christian Mounzeo was arrested last week at the airport as he touched down in Brazzaville, the capital of the Republic of Congo, for allegedly defaming Denis Sassou-Nguesso, the Congo’s president. These events follow on the heels of Mounzeo’s criticisms at an international conference of the continued mismanagement of oil wealth in Congo-Brazzaville.
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/ 27 November 2006
Criminal gangs using hijacked computers are behind a surge in unwanted e-mails peddling sex, drugs and stock tips in Britain. The number of spam messages has tripled since June and now accounts for as many as nine out of 10 e-mails sent worldwide, according to United States e-mail security company Postini.
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/ 27 November 2006
Historical injustices that have resulted in landlessness among Kenyans have been the focus of recent public discussions on a land policy — the first to be drawn up in the East African country. Previously, Kenya has had no clearly defined laws on how to manage land, leading to a breakdown in land administration. Disparities in land ownership, tenure insecurity and squatting have occurred, often resulting in conflict.
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/ 27 November 2006
It was midnight at the Charlooe Drinks Bar and business was flagging. Dozens of prostitutes, some barely 12, were hovering outside the main avenue of Castelo dos Sonhos (the Castle of Dreams), an isolated town in the northern state of Para that, until recently, was at the centre of Brazil’s illegal logging trade.
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/ 27 November 2006
It was, in retrospect, an age of soft-hat innocence. At the start of their deployment to Helmand last year, British soldiers acted like preening contestants in a military popularity contest. Paratroopers spurned helmets in favour of berets, learned pidgin Pashto and armed themselves with friendly smiles.
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/ 27 November 2006
With humanitarian groups sounding the alarm about the violence in eastern Chad near Sudan, the Chadian government has sent troops south to neighbouring Central African Republic to battle rebels there who, it said, are being backed by Sudan. Chad is already contributing troops to a regional peacekeeping force in CAR but the prime minister said last week that he wants to send more.
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/ 27 November 2006
Africa is full of bad stories that started well and good stories that started badly. Mauritania is developing into one of the latter. Voters waited patiently and peacefully in long lines to cast their ballots in the country’s parliamentary and provincial elections, recently. They look set to do so again in presidential elections that are scheduled for March, ending military rule and completing the process of bringing democracy to this arid, sparsely populated country in north-west Africa.