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/ 24 November 2006
The JSE was marginally weaker in noon trade on Friday as negative European markets, on which heavyweight dual-listed stocks were down, took their toll. Losses locally were pared by a weaker rand and higher gold price. By 12.14pm, the all share index dipped 0,11%.
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/ 24 November 2006
Moody’s <i>Economy.com</i> expects South Africa’s CPIX inflation to peak in the closing months of the year and to linger at the upper end of the central bank’s 3% to 6% target range going into 2007, before moderating steadily. The recent slowdown in retail sales growth was flagged as a sign that monetary tightening is having its desired effect, it added.
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/ 24 November 2006
Politely pouring a cup of tea into a bone china cup in his sumptuous Claridges suite, Peter Brabeck-Letmathe is an unlikely bogeyman. Yet ask many food campaigners to name their least favourite corporate executive and the silver-haired Austrian at the head of the world’s largest food company, Nestlé, would come high on many lists.
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/ 24 November 2006
A plan to roll and smoke the world’s largest joint was cancelled in Amsterdam when the organisers realised they could be breaking the law. ”We have now read the small print and realise there could be problems,” Thijs Verheij was quoted as saying by ANP news agency after consulting Dutch drugs laws.
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/ 24 November 2006
President Thabo Mbeki on Friday lauded the Holcim-AfriSam deal and lambasted those questioning the Swiss cement company’s motive in selling most of its South African subsidiary to a black consortium. Mbeki said Holcim had decided it made good commercial sense for Holcim South Africa to be black-owned and controlled.
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/ 24 November 2006
German traffic police were shocked to see a California highway patrol car cruising along the motorway, driven by a man dressed as an authentic United States cop, authorities said on Thursday. But they recovered sufficiently to book the 35-year-old Goettingen resident, whose uniform badge read ”TJ Lazer”.
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/ 24 November 2006
A bus driver who was 13 times over the legal alcohol limit while driving a bus load of schoolchildren had a simple request for police who arrested him for drunken driving, an Australian court heard on Wednesday. ”Can I finish my run, at least to drop these kids off?”
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/ 24 November 2006
A Johannesburg woman told delegates to an international conference at the University of Cape Town on Thursday how she was robbed of her car last month by ”humane” hijackers — one of whom even gave her advice on how to avoid being hijacked again in future.
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/ 24 November 2006
Indigenous evergreen forests comprise only 0,56% of South Africa’s land surface area. These forests form the smallest of our natural biomes, made up mostly of tiny slivers and corners, coppices scattered across the land. There are the greater forests of Knysna and places like Dukuduku in KwaZulu-Natal, but political, social and commercial forces are putting enormous strain on these.
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/ 24 November 2006
A 64-year-old Palestinian woman blew herself up as a suicide bomber in Gaza on Thursday in an attack on Israeli troops. Two soldiers were slightly injured when the woman, apparently a supporter of the Hamas militant group, detonated explosives strapped to her body, becoming the conflict’s oldest suicide bomber.