Sudan’s government failed last year to stop atrocities in its western Darfur region, while Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe used intimidation and violence to remain in power, the United States State Department said in an annual report released on Monday.
British Petroleum’s (BP) R265-million empowerment deal with the Mineworkers Investment Company (MIC) and Women’s Development Bank Investment Holdings (WDBIH) avoids instantly the new sin of being ”narrow-based”. That is because both the MIC and the WDBIH are owned by charitable trusts and have the benefit of being unquestionably broad-based by design. The beneficiaries are ultimately miners and poor, rural women.
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/ 28 February 2005
”In May 2003, I was dragged away from a group of journalists by state security agents. After they abducted me, they put a hood over my head and held me for more than 10 hours.” Ongoing media intimidation is a sure sign of Zimbabwean government insecurity, writes Andrew Meldrum.
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/ 28 February 2005
Six people died and at least 11 were wounded when fighting broke out early on Monday in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, witnesses and medical personnel said. Witnesses said militias of the city’s Islamic courts clashed with residents in the northern part of the capital over the control of the bus traffic in the area.
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/ 28 February 2005
International efforts to mediate the crisis in Côte d’Ivoire have been buried by the government’s ”acts of war”, the West African state’s rebels said on Monday after pro-government militants attacked one of their positions in the restive west. More than 100 militants waged a pre-dawn attack near Logouale, about 450km north-west of Abidjan.
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/ 28 February 2005
Technology got the better of a burglar who got stuck in an electronically controlled door while trying to break into a Benoni dry-cleaners, East Rand police said on Monday. Superintendent Eugene Opperman said the man tried to break into Alphen Park Dry Cleaners on Sunday. He managed to get the electronic doors partially open when they slammed shut again.
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/ 28 February 2005
Israel looked set on Monday for a U-turn by deciding not to destroy the homes of settlers due to be uprooted from Gaza, as a special unit was established to combat extremist violence threatening the pull-out. Meanwhile, in the fallout from Friday’s suicide attack in Tel Aviv, Israeli officials briefed European Union ambassadors on Syria’s alleged involvement.
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/ 28 February 2005
Councillors of a western Polish village were to decide on Monday whether to allow controversial German scientist Guenther von Hagen to set up a laboratory for preparing human corpses for public display. Von Hagen Bodyworld exhibition of plasticised corpses has been shown amid heavy public debate across Europe and the world.
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/ 28 February 2005
The National Party withdrew from the government of national unity (GNU) when the African National Congress refused to establish a consultative council to deal with minority concerns. This is according to former president FW de Klerk, who on Monday addressed the Cape Town Press Club on the role of minorities in post-1994 South Africa.