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/ 23 February 2005
<img src="http://www.mg.co.za/ContentImages/197779/special_rep_icon_template.gif" align=left>South African Reserve Bank Governor Tito Mboweni says that most South Africans don’t remember interest rates being as low as they are at present. He said that interest rates had been lowered "most definitely because inflation has come down."
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/ 23 February 2005
Simphiwe Mbalula’s home was saved last month when a runaway fire razed about 3Â 200 shacks in the Joe Slovo informal settlement outside Cape Town. Instead of relief, he feels unlucky, as all the victims of the fire have been fast-tracked to the front of council housing lists. They will receive houses as part of the first phase of the N2 Gateway Project.
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/ 23 February 2005
Mohammed Yassin has trouble falling asleep at night. But his insomnia is not caused by haunting dreams of a second tsunami — the sound of construction work until late at night is what keeps him, and other Nusa residents, awake. But few people in the Indonesian village are complaining, because the work is for a good cause.
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/ 23 February 2005
Vicki Robinson lists President Thabo Mbeki’s promises to the nation for 2005 — a presidential Powerpoint you can use to keep him on his toes, from a final action plan for Project Consolidate and commuter transport and safety to a summit on corruption and outstanding claims in the land-restitution programme.
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/ 23 February 2005
”I fall into the [British] generation for whom apartheid was the dominant international cause of our youth. I assumed that a trip [to South Africa] in the winter of 2005 would be to a wholly different country, with apartheid and all its works a bad, fading memory. That’s where I was wrong,” writes Jonathan Freedland.
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/ 23 February 2005
Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith have agreed a pact that they hope will prevent their relationship from being destroyed. Either can have sex with a third party so long as the other gives permission. They would appear to be trying for a third way between monogamy and infidelity — being faithful to one’s partner while allowing a kind of extramarital sexual licence that will not destroy the relationship.
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/ 22 February 2005
United States President George Bush on Tuesday thanked Nato leaders for helping to train Iraqi security forces, but made clear that plans to lift a European arms embargo on China still trouble transatlantic ties. Bush is in Belgium on a whirlwind campaign to repair US-Europe relations ripped apart by the Iraq war
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/ 22 February 2005
Student leaders must ”sit down and talk” to resolve the issues sparking a series of student protests around Gauteng, a national Department of Education spokesperson said on Tuesday after a series of student uprisings around Gauteng and unrest at a school in the North West province.
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/ 22 February 2005
Gauteng is becoming the safest province in the country, figures from the provincial government and some independent organisations have confirmed, the South African government news agency said on Wednesday. Gauteng community safety minister Firoz Cachalia attributed all this to the increased number of police officers in the province.