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/ 6 July 2005

Woman gives birth to triplet 13 years after siblings born

An American woman has given birth to a third, healthy triplet 13 years after the first two were delivered. Debbie Beasley’s youngest daughter, Laina, was born five months ago after spending 13 years in a freezer chilled to -235C. Laina also survived her mother’s near-fatal reaction to the fertility drug Lupon and an eight-hour drive across the baking Californian desert while she was still a two-celled embryo.

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/ 6 July 2005

Trouble on the left flank

The past few weeks brought a spate of complaints from the left. The Young Communist League, the Communications Workers’ Union and members of the Zimbabwe Solidarity and Consultation Forum were all unhappy with various reports. Piers Pigou, of the Zimbabwe Torture Victims Project, wrote to complain that a report, "Anti-Zim front fractures" (March 24), was "inaccurate and lazy journalism".

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/ 6 July 2005

An idea worth milking

For Grace Dinkwanyane, her community’s cows are miracles. They have become the gift of self-sustainability, she says, smiling at her own miracle, a Jersey cow named Beest. Dinkwanyane, a 45-year-old farmer from Groblersdal, says the cows owned by her and nine other women in her community have given them pride and confidence, as well as providing food for their families.

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/ 6 July 2005

Language policing not on

The Mikro Primary School case has generated astonishing levels of noise and mud-slinging, ostensibly over language rights, in schools. Last week the Supreme Court of Appeal upheld the Cape High Court’s judgement in February that the Mikro school governing body had acted lawfully in arriving at its language policy — namely, instruction in Afrikaans.

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/ 6 July 2005

Documentary claims Zuma innocent, media guilty

A <i>Citizen</i> lead story entitled “Documentary claims Zuma was plot victim”, written by executive editor Martin Williams and published on July 4, has elicited a range of animated responses from the media industry. The piece, which refers to “an explosive TV documentary alleging former deputy president Jacob Zuma is the victim of a trial by media orchestrated by people within the ANC."

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/ 6 July 2005

Everything you ever wanted to know about movies

You should understand that there’s a serious lack of genuine choice in the films we see in South Africa. This is something that’s hidden in plain sight. Almost all the films you see advertised reflect the product chosen by two distributors. Here are some sites where you can browse through vast numbers of current and past films that you’ve been deprived of without knowing.

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/ 6 July 2005

Growing a power giant

Thulane Gcabashe possesses the modesty to realise that being CEO of a company such as Eskom merely offers a chance to make a small contribution to a phenomenally huge project. He is about to lead Eskom into what he calls "a new era of growth" in the form of a R93-billion capital expansion phase, which, he readily admits, "will never be completed in my time".

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/ 6 July 2005

Zambia works to shed corrupt image

In an African context, Zambia’s level of corruption is hardly the worst, but it is a problem and politicians, church leaders and ordinary Zambians are starting to speak out against it. With its new status as a highly indebted poor country and the recent scrapping of its debt to Paris Club creditors boosting hopes of an economic upswing, perceptions are everything.

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/ 6 July 2005

Happily never after

It was the tale of Bluebeard that scared me to death. The tale of the wife unable to resist the temptation of opening the forbidden door at the end of the gallery and finding beyond it a room lined with the mutilated bodies of former wives and — a nice touch, this — ”clotted blood all over the floor” shook me more than somewhat. And I was 24 at the time.