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/ 24 November 2006
Willie Madisha, president of the Congress of South African Trade Unions, survived another round of debate about divisions within the federation during a tense, two-day central executive committee meeting recently where ”gloves were off and blood was on the floor”, in the words of general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi.
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/ 24 November 2006
It was conceived as the ultimate tribute to human ingenuity and international cooperation — an orbiting space lab that would play host to some of the most talented and highly trained individuals on the planet, doing cutting-edge science. But 20 years and more than -billion later the International Space Station has been reduced to recouping some of its extravagant costs with a commercial stunt.
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/ 24 November 2006
The good news is, they are most unlikely to be prosecuted for speeding. Two employees of an ice rink in Boise, Idaho, have been sacked for taking a ride to a local burger drive-thru in a pair of ice resurfacing machines. The Zamboni grooming machines have a top speed of about 8kph.
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/ 24 November 2006
An indefinite curfew was imposed on Baghdad on Thursday night and its international airport closed after the city was convulsed by the deadliest sectarian violence since the United States led war began in March 2003. Suspected Sunni-Arab militants launched a salvo of five car bombs and two mortar rounds on the densely populated Shia slum of Sadr City.
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/ 24 November 2006
A police headquarters investigation three years ago gathered damning evidence against Glenn Agliotti — giving the lie to police Commissioner Jackie Selebi’s claim that he did not know his friend was a crook. The investigation gathered evidence not only of Agliotti’s allegedly criminal activities, but also of his involvement with Palto, a squad of "freelance" operatives who used Selebi and the police as their cover.
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/ 24 November 2006
Relatives of the 21-year-old woman who has accused ANC chief whip Mbulelo Goniwe of sexual harassment are pressing her to drop the charges and return to Lusikisiki in the Eastern Cape to face a traditional court. If the court finds Goniwe guilty, said a family spokesperson, he will be fined five cows.
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/ 24 November 2006
South Africa is energy inefficient because we don’t value our carbon resource sufficiently. There are a number of perspectives that, together, make up the picture. One perspective deals with process efficiency — a technological issue — another with the structure of the economy — how much of our economy is fundamentally energy-hungry.
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/ 24 November 2006
Struggling state-owned airline South African Airways (SAA) was able to report a profit for its past financial year, but a closer look at the balance sheet shows that, but for a change in accounting policy and a government bail-out, the airline would have made a loss. There has been a renewed focus on its finances since the launch of its low-cost subsidiary Mango.
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/ 24 November 2006
Feeling exhausted and burnt out? Need a holiday but the work pace is unrelenting? Welcome to a booming economy. We do not need statistics and growth numbers to tell us that something extraordinary is happening around us. Burnout is taking over from crime as the number one dinner conversation as well as frustration at the lack of supply of goods and services as hardware stores run out of cement
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/ 24 November 2006
At security posts dotted around the fields between the Jura mountains and Lake Geneva, scientists are installing high-tech retina scans above shafts descending 80m down — and leading to the largest scientific instrument ever built. The machine is being bolted together inside a tunnel 27km long, and when the power is thrown on next year it will recreate conditions unknown for 14-billion years.