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/ 10 February 2008
A new court battle will be held on Monday over the detention of French rogue trader Jerome Kerviel. The decision by a Paris appeals court on Friday to back a prosecution demand that the 31-year-old trader be held in custody was the latest twist in the worst investment banking scandal in history.
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/ 9 February 2008
A second trader suspected of involvement in the multibillion-dollar losses at Société Générale bank was taken for questioning by judges on Saturday. The unnamed broker at Société Générale subsidiary Fimat was seen leaving the headquarters of the police financial brigade aboard an unmarked police van escorted by a car.
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/ 8 February 2008
Energy-rich Nigeria has approved a new policy requiring gas producers to direct a part of their output to the domestic market, rather than exporting it, a presidential statement said on Friday. Under the new policy regime, "all oil and gas developers in the country are to allocate a specified amount of gas from their reserves and annual production to the domestic market", it said.
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/ 8 February 2008
Democratic Republic of Congo mining investors hoping for reassurance about the controversial review of mining contracts were sorely disappointed recently when the country’s deputy mining minister, Victor Kasongo, announced that an initial study showed that not a single mining contract would escape renegotiation.
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/ 7 February 2008
According to a <i>Finweek</i> report last week, South African education is in crisis mode.
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/ 7 February 2008
Tanzania Prime Minister Edward Lowassa told Parliament Thursday he had tendered his resignation to the president after being implicated in a corruption scandal over an energy deal. "Because I have been linked to this scandal, I have decided to write to the president asking to be relieved of my duties," the premier told lawmakers.
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/ 7 February 2008
Diamond giant De Beers spends $100-million a year on exploration activities in the regions where the company expects to have the most impact, and has invested more than this in the past few years to establish a greater presence and activity rate in Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo, its group MD said on Wednesday.
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/ 6 February 2008
Child rights organisations on Wednesday intensified calls for Parliament to increase the age at which a child can be held responsible for criminal conduct to 12, saying the current cut-off age of 10 proposed in the Child Justice Bill is too low. The organisations were briefing the National Assembly’s justice committee.
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/ 6 February 2008
A British student swallowed his door key to prevent friends from forcing him to go home because he was drunk, reports said on Wednesday. Chris Foster, studying computer design at Bournemouth University in southern England, had drunk six beers as well as vodka and whisky when his friends decided he should go home and sleep it off.
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/ 6 February 2008
The South African Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SACCI) Business Confidence Index (BCI) dropped even further in January to 93,8 after measuring 94,8 in December 2007. SACCI said that apart from a single instance in April 2007 when the BCI flared up to 101,9, the index had been in a declining trend throughout 2007.
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/ 5 February 2008
China is debating whether to relax control of the internet during the Olympics, allowing access to banned websites such as the BBC, a spokesperson for the organising committee said on Tuesday. Plans to tear down the so-called Great Firewall of China were being debated and a decision was expected soon.
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/ 5 February 2008
Britons are losing their grip on reality, according to a poll that came out on Monday, which showed that nearly a quarter think Winston Churchill was a myth while the majority reckon Sherlock Holmes was real. The survey found that 47% thought the 12th century English king, Richard the Lionheart, was a myth.
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/ 5 February 2008
Nigeria can shed some light A few years ago I lived in Nigeria. One of the situations I had to adjust to was the frequent power cuts. I was an MBA student writing a thesis on mobile telecommunication networks in Nigeria and I investigated the cost of doing business for these giants, which had to […]
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/ 4 February 2008
Property owners are gearing themselves for the lucrative renting market in 2010, when South Africa hosts the Soccer World Cup, but should be cautious as the football party tenants descend en masse. The World Cup is less than three years away and South African property owners have spotted a potential gap in the market.
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/ 4 February 2008
The death toll from a series of earthquakes that hit Central Africa rose on Monday to 43 as a major aid operation for hundreds of injured and thousands of homeless gathered pace amid new aftershocks. Thirty-seven of the deaths were reported in Rwanda’s Western Province and six around the Democratic Republic of Congo city of Bukavu, which was near the epicentre.
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/ 4 February 2008
There are few things more painful than a proud parent talking about an overachieving child. You can’t shut them up. They go on and on about recent adventures in sentence construction and, later, maths Olympiads and, later, university scholarships. I know one such parent in the quaint seaside hamlet they call Durban, writes Lev David.
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/ 3 February 2008
Two strong earthquakes shook the African Great Lakes region on Sunday, killing at least 34 people in Rwanda and six in the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to officials and hospital sources. Hundreds of people were wounded, many with fractured limbs, after the two quakes struck close together along the western Rift Valley fault.
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/ 1 February 2008
West Virginia is considering a Bill to teach schoolchildren how to handle a gun and hunt safely. Its proponent hopes this will increase state revenues from hunting licences, a state lawmaker said on Thursday. "We will teach a hunting safety course during their physical education class," state Senator and Bill sponsor Billy Wayne Bailey said.
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/ 1 February 2008
A drunk driver on Friday admitted killing a South African rugby fan who was heading home in London after celebrating his team beating England in the World Cup final. Jimmy Kateende (28), from New Malden in south-west London, admitted causing the death of Hugh Morton by driving without due care and attention while under the influence of alcohol.
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/ 1 February 2008
"Get out … of your own way!" said the transcendental meditation guru Maharishi. TM devotees believe that their daily dive into "pure consciousness" is the ultimate form of renewable energy. Alec Erwin might want to sign up for a course because at present we are in danger of consolidating the very policy choices that got us into this mess.
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/ 31 January 2008
Understandably, in a time of crisis someone has to carry the blame.
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/ 31 January 2008
The head of the Orthodox Church of Greece, Archbishop Christodoulos, who died on January 28 aged 69 after a seven-month battle with liver cancer, was a charismatic orator who captivated and divided Greek society with his strong views on nationalism and church-state relations.
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/ 31 January 2008
Margaret Truman Daniel, the only child of former United States president Harry S Truman who was known for her mystery novels and singing career, died on January 29 after a brief illness. Truman was in college when her father, who was serving as vice-president, became the president following the death of Franklin D Roosevelt in 1945.
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/ 30 January 2008
Trade union Solidarity is introducing its own medical fund in a move against what it called "high medical rates", it said on Wednesday. "It’s a non-profit service. We don’t want to make millions out of the sick, but make private healthcare more accessible to the people of South Africa," said Jaco Kleynhans, Solidarity spokesperson.
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/ 30 January 2008
Vehicle maker Ford Motor Company of Southern African (Ford SA) plans to invest more than R1,5-billion to expand operations for its next-generation compact pickup truck and Puma diesel engine, it said on Wednesday. The investment will start in 2009 and be split between its assembly plant in Pretoria, and engine facility in Port Elizabeth.
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/ 30 January 2008
David Smith reviews David Robbins’s <i>On the Bridge of Goodbye</i>, which chronicles the sad state of the San throughout Southern Africa.
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/ 29 January 2008
Lovelorn staff at a Japanese marketing company can take paid time off after a bad break-up with a partner, with more "heartache leave" on offer as they get older. Tokyo-based Hime & Company, which also gives staff paid time off to hit the shops during sales season, says heartache leave allows staff to cry themselves out and return to work refreshed.
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/ 29 January 2008
Now that it’s official that Eskom will be regularly switching off our power for some time to come, we need to look at measures to prevent loss or damage caused by an interrupted power supply. Plan A, of course, says Gari Dombo, MD of Alexander Forbes Insurance, is to buy a generator.
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/ 29 January 2008
Twelve suspected militants were killed by a missile strike in Pakistan’s troubled tribal belt, hours after gunmen held 300 children hostage at a nearby school, officials said on Tuesday. Separately, a Pakistani soldier was killed and five others injured in the latest clashes between security forces and Islamist insurgents in the lawless borderlands with Afghanistan.
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/ 28 January 2008
Sudan will seek to head the African Union during the continental body’s upcoming summit at its headquarters in Addis Ababa, a Sudanese official said. Sudan’s two previous bids for the AU’s rotating presidency have been unsuccessful due to reservations over Khartoum’s rights record in the western region of Darfur.
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/ 28 January 2008
The Zimbabwe government on Monday slapped down opposition demands for a new constitution to be adopted before a March general election, saying it would only be put to a referendum after the polls. Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa told the state-run <i>Herald</i> newspaper that "the state was not in a hurry to craft a new constitution".
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/ 28 January 2008
If a week is a long time in politics, it’s even longer in the dark. Today "world-class" Eskom is talking about power rationing, calling into question even the golden calf: foreign direct investment lured by low-priced (subsidised) electricity, writes Richard Worthington.