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/ 17 January 2008
"We have to start viewing $1 000 as a clear possibility for later this year," precious-metals consultancy GFMS said on Thursday. Releasing its <i>Gold Survey 2007: Update 2</i>, the consultancy projected an average gold price of $840 an ounce over the first half of 2008 with further increases possible later in the year.
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/ 17 January 2008
Emerging global superpower China has dethroned South Africa as the world’s largest gold producer after 102 years of holding the prestigious title, precious metals consultancy GFMS said on Thursday. GFMS executive chairperson Philip Klapwijk drew attention to this historic event at the launch of GFMS’s <i>Gold Survey 2007 — Update Two</i>.
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/ 17 January 2008
Celebrated United States cancer researcher Judah Folkman, who demonstrated the link between blood-vessel growth and tumours becoming malignant, died on January 14 at 74 of an apparent heart attack, the Boston hospital where he worked said. He died in Denver, Colorado, while en route to Vancouver, Canada, to give a lecture.
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/ 17 January 2008
Standard Bank says it is making significant strides in trying to ensure that investing on the stock market is accessible to average South Africans. Standard Bank Online Share Trading has again reduced its fees for 2008, the fourth fee reduction since January 2005.
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/ 17 January 2008
President Thabo Mbeki’s disingenuous handling of the charges against police commissioner Jackie Selebi provides a perfect illustration of why ordinary ANC members no longer want him as their leader. He does not talk straight and consistently fails to take South Africa into his confidence. In his management of a slew of controversies in the past nine years he has forfeited the nation’s trust, too.
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/ 16 January 2008
New banknotes, including a Z$10-million bill, will go into circulation in inflation-ravaged Zimbabwe this week, the central bank’s governor said on Wednesday. Less than a month after announcing a similar move, Gideon Gono said the new notes would provide much-needed relief to consumers who often have to go shopping with sacks of cash.
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/ 16 January 2008
Press-freedom groups agree that an increase in arrests, intimidation and harassment of journalists in Niger is impeding development in one of the poorest countries in the world. At least 14 journalists were arrested in Niger in 2007. Four of them are still in prison awaiting sentencing.
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/ 16 January 2008
Fresh violence in the Sudanese state of West Darfur has restricted humanitarian work around El Geneina, with aid workers describing the region as a "no-go area". According to aid workers, who did not want to be named, two villages in Geneina were bombed on January 12 and 13 by Sudanese government Antonov planes.
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/ 16 January 2008
Serena Williams thinks her sister Venus got a bum rap when a television station played slow motion clips as a male commentator admired her bottom on air. Switchboards around the nation lit up with complaints following the incident on Tuesday during Venus’s match against China’s Yan Zi, according to local television reports.
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/ 16 January 2008
Standard Bank is making strides in trying to ensure that investing in the stock market is accessible to average South Africans by reducing its fees for 2008. This is the fourth fee reduction since January 2005. The bank reduced its brokerage rates from 0,7% to 0,6% per transaction, with a minimum fee of R70.
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/ 16 January 2008
The Congress of South African Trade Unions has the greatest respect for former Chief Justice Arthur Chaskalson and Mr George Bizos. The two played a valuable role in the struggle for freedom. They made an important contribution to the drafting of our Constitution and Bill of Rights, and we fully agree with them that the separation of powers between the judiciary and the executive is an essential cornerstone of our democracy.
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/ 14 January 2008
European Union competition regulators said on Monday they would launch two new antitrust probes against Microsoft, opening fresh fronts in their battle against the United States software giant’s dominant market power. The European Commission said one investigation targeted the interoperability of a broad range of software with rival products.
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/ 14 January 2008
A Sri Lankan man has been released from prison after spending 50 years on remand, his lawyer said on Monday. DP James, now 80, was arrested in August 1958 for attacking and wounding his father with a knife. He was sent to jail, then moved to a psychiatric hospital, and then discharged back to jail — where he was forgotten about.
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/ 14 January 2008
Things are calmer in much of Kenya after a week of national hell. In Kibera, Kangemi, Dandora and all the burning slums, people are trying to get back to work and to find food. The roads in and out of Eldoret are open now — although it is there, and in other parts of the Rift Valley, where things remain volatile.
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/ 13 January 2008
No red carpet, no Keira or Angelina, no best-dressed/worst-dressed lists, no goody bags, no limo rides, no parties and no champagne. Sunday’s lacklustre Golden Globe awards will sound an alarm across Los Angeles: the show does not go on.
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/ 13 January 2008
Six French charity workers convicted of child kidnapping in Africa will go before a court near Paris on Monday, as judges seek to adapt their Chadian sentences to French law. Twenty days after the Zoe’s Ark team were given eight years hard labourCreteil prosecutor Jean-Jacques Bosc has already said he will seek eight years imprisonment.
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/ 11 January 2008
The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend) on Friday claimed responsibility for the blaze that started earlier in the day on a tanker berthed in Port Harcourt, the country’s main oil hub. "Mend confirms that its Freelance Freedom Fighters working inside the oil industry detonated a remote explosive device," the group said in a statement.
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/ 11 January 2008
A bull swept into a raging river during floods in Australia earlier this week survived a 90km trip downstream before being rescued, his owners said on Friday. Barney, a two-year-old Brahmin bull, was washed away on Sunday morning by the rain-swollen Tweed River.
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/ 11 January 2008
The statement by retired chief justice Arthur Chaskalson and advocate George Bizos reproduced on this page is both measured and timely. Whatever the merits of the argument that Jacob Zuma will not be able to obtain a fair trial, this is surely a matter for the judiciary to decide.
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/ 10 January 2008
Growth in house prices in the middle segment of the market slowed to a nominal 11,2% year-on-year in December 2007 — the lowest price growth since December 1999, when it was 9,3%, the Absa house-price index showed on Thursday. Nominal price growth of 12,5% year-on-year was recorded in November last year.
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/ 10 January 2008
South Africa’s mining sector made a positive contribution to the overall GDP in the third quarter of 2007, but this is not expected to be the case in the fourth quarter, Efficient Group economist Fanie Joubert said on Thursday. "The main stumbling block to the mining sector is the strike action as well as deaths on the mines," said Joubert.
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/ 10 January 2008
The ANC, blithely ignoring all the warnings before its Polokwane conference, has got itself in a pretty pickle over Jacob Zuma. That much was obvious from its national executive committee meeting this week, which spent hours debating what to do about the detailed graft, money-laundering and racketeering charges now laid against the ANC president.
The world’s coral reefs are in alarming decline, but what — or who — is most to blame? A groundbreaking study published on Wednesday singles out human settlement, especially coastal development and agriculture, as the main culprit, even more so than warming sea waters and acidification linked to global warming.
French police have arrested a former officer in the Rwandan army, Marcel Bivugabagabo, accused of taking part in the 1994 genocide, an association of legal plaintiffs said on Wednesday. Bivugabagabo (53) is on the list of war criminals wanted for trial by the Rwandan government.
A pig genetically modified in China to make it glow has given birth to fluorescent piglets, proving such changes can be inherited, state media said on Wednesday. The sow was one of three pigs who had fluorescent green protein injected into their embryos when they were bred in December 2006 by scientists in north-east China.
A British adventurer who reached Timbuktu in a truck fuelled by chocolate said on Tuesday he now wants to travel to China on a rubbish-powered aircraft. Andy Pag (34) and his sidekick, John Grimshaw, made it back from the remote city in Mali on Monday. The engineer-turned-journalist wasted no time in announcing his next expedition aimed at highlighting the benefits of biofuels.
Leasing company Awas (Ireland) is expected to announce a deal to buy up to 100 Airbus jets worth $6,9-billion, the <i>Wall Street Journal</i> reported on Wednesday. The news came after aerospace group Boeing said it delivered 441 commercial airplanes in 2007 as part of a tight race with Europe’s Airbus.
Calling for urgent reform of the United Nations, France President Nicolas Sarkozy pledged on Tuesday to help Brazil, Germany, India, Japan and a major African country join the UN Security Council as permanent members. Sarkozy said he had recently told UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon that "UN reform can’t wait any longer".
A reverend who survived a massacre and was held captive by rebels in Sierra Leone testified on Tuesday in the trial of former Liberian president Charles Taylor about seeing killings, rapes and mutilations. Taylor is accused of arming, training and controlling the Revolutionary United Front rebels in Sierra Leone.
At least 30 people were killed on Monday and 10 others missing, feared dead, following a fierce blaze in a South Korean refrigerated warehouse, firefighters said. About 200 firefighters were sent into the basement of the two-storey building in Icheon, 80km south of Seoul, after the fire was put out, and recovered 30 bodies.
Ratings agency Standard & Poor’s on Monday announced the launch of a new investable index for investors seeking exposure to environmentally responsible investment strategies. The index provides diversified, liquid exposure to 30 of the largest publicly listed companies operating in ecology-related industries.
Global economic growth is "robust" but inflation risks remain as markets absorb the impact of the United States subprime crisis and higher food prices, European Central Bank (ECB) chief Jean-Claude Trichet said on Monday. "Food is a very big problem" stoking inflationary pressures, Trichet said.