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/ 16 September 2005
Japan on Friday carried out its first execution in a year, hanging a man who was convicted of killing two women in robberies, an official and reports said. Japan, the only major industrialised nation other than the United States to practice capital punishment, gives inmates little advance notice before they are hanged and does not release their names to the public.
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/ 16 September 2005
The five Democratic Alliance (DA) MPs who defected from the party just before the close of the floor-crossing window on Thursday had lost their seats, said DA Chief Whip Douglas Gibson. ”The opinion of the DA — which has been confirmed by two independent counsel — is that the law requires that for any DA MP to cross the floor, six members must cross simultaneously,” he said.
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/ 16 September 2005
The foul waters left behind by Hurricane Katrina in the United States have not claimed a single typhoid victim, but in Delmas, Mpumalanga, government chaos has resulted in two typhoid deaths — and the number of fatalities is rising. The outbreak occurs in the middle of a massive transfer programme of water services schemes to municipalities by the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry.
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/ 16 September 2005
Israel is to set up a "security zone" extending into Palestinian territory in northern Gaza to avoid militants infiltrating the Jewish state, the defence ministry said on Friday. "Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz ordered a security zone to be laid down on the Palestinian side of the northern Gaza Strip in order to minimise the danger to Israeli communities by the chaos reigning in Gaza," a spokesperson said.
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/ 16 September 2005
What does it take to win a slice of the valuable long-term fishing rights that the Department of Environment Affairs and Tourism is about to allocate? Officially, it takes a matrix of biological, economic and transformation criteria, a consideration of the applicant’s capacity and track-record in the industry. Unofficially, it seems numerous companies are relying on a hefty dose of political influence.
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/ 16 September 2005
PetroSA, the state-owned enterprise at the centre of the Oilgate scandal, admitted to the auditor general that it should have conducted a due diligence investigation before advancing R15-million to Imvume Management in December 2003.
As the <i>Mail & Guardian</i> revealed earlier this year, Imvume passed on R11-million of the advance to the African National Congress, which was suffering a cash-crunch at the time.
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/ 16 September 2005
Honda has just announced that they’ll soon be launching the world’s first production motorcycle equipped with airbags. The new Gold Wing, due to go on sale in about a year’s time, will be fitted with an airbag module containing an airbag and inflator, crash sensors to react to sudden deceleration, and an ECU to interpret whether there’s a collision about to occur.
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/ 16 September 2005
A working coalition of six Non-Governmental Organisations connected to the LGBTI (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex) community is calling for the SABC to publicly explain their position on the recent discontinuation of Radio 2000’s <i>Tuesday Nite Live</i>.
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/ 16 September 2005
In <i>The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy</i>, the Deep Thought computer announced that the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything was 42. Physicists are finding themselves just as frustrated as the super-intelligent beings who built Deep Thought after discovering that the ultimate answer to their questions is a set of meaningless numbers.
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/ 16 September 2005
After its unbundling by holding company Johnnic earlier this year, media group Johnnic Communications has become one of the most eligible maidens on the stock exchange. The problem is, the cost of its lobola has screamed up over the past two years. Johncom’s share price is up 28% since its unbundling in March and this sets the bar that much higher for any potential suitor.