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/ 16 October 2007
An Australian man dressed only in his underpants survived a fall from his ninth-storey apartment when an apparent incident of high jinks went badly wrong, police said on Tuesday. The 35-year-old was attempting to build planks across to a neighbour’s flat when he lost his footing and plummeted 30m to the ground, police said.
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/ 16 October 2007
A French rugby fan was so distraught at his team’s World Cup semifinal exit that he threw his television out of the window of his flat on to a car parked two floors below. Police said the man, who had been drinking as he watched Les Bleus slip to a 14-9 defeat to England on Saturday, also threw his video recorder and furniture from his second-floor apartment.
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/ 15 October 2007
Victims who filed suit for $400-billion against United States businesses allegedly complicit with the former South African apartheid regime have found new hope following a federal court ruling in the US. "The appeal court decision is a major victory," said Michael Hausfeld, a lawyer for the victims on the heels of Friday’s decision by a Manhattan federal court.
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/ 15 October 2007
The Airports Company South Africa has spoken out about the "challenges" presented by the construction industry. In its annual report, presented to Parliament, the company complained about the construction skills shortage, long lead times for material supplies, rapidly escalating costs because of capacity constraints and a tender environment that favours contractors.
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/ 14 October 2007
Visitors to London’s Tate Modern gallery are encouraged to engage actively with a divisive new work — and some, it seems, are taking the request too literally. The new exhibit, <i>Shibboleth</i> by Colombian artist Doris Salcedo, consists of a 167m-long crack in the floor of the cavernous Turbine Hall.
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/ 12 October 2007
<a href="http://www.mg.co.za/specialreport.aspx?area=ancconference_home"><img src="http://www.mg.co.za/ContentImages/321750/Icon_ANCconference.gif" align=left border=0></a>ANC deputy president Jacob Zuma is on a charm offensive to assure global markets and local investors that his potential presidency will not be characterised by radical changes meant to appease his left-wing backers. Zuma, whose candidacy as ANC president is backed by left-wing organisations within the ANC-led tripartite alliance, is caught between a rock and a hard place
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/ 12 October 2007
Lauri Kubuitsile won the R25 000 first prize in the 13th annual BTA/Anglo Platinum Short Story Competition for The Christmas Wedding. This is an extract.
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/ 12 October 2007
The United Nations secretary general is "deeply concerned" by the failure of the government and former rebels in Côte d’Ivoire to achieve steps toward peace. In his latest report on Côte d’Ivoire, released this week, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon says lagging progress is undermining the Ouagadougou peace accord.
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/ 12 October 2007
"Our crops have been destroyed by the water and houses have collapsed," says Egoliam of his village’s ordeal in Amuria, Uganda. The heaviest rains in 35 years have caused the worst floods on the continent in decades. Flood waters have destroyed vital infrastructure and left more than one million people needing emergency help.
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/ 12 October 2007
Burma Prime Minister Soe Win, considered one of the hardliners of the isolated military regime, died on Friday after a long illness, state media said. "The Prime Minister, General Soe Win, died this evening" at a military hospital in the country’s main city, Rangoon, state radio said.
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/ 12 October 2007
Nine South African soldiers were killed on Friday in a shooting accident involving an anti-aircraft gun during a training exercise at a base in the central Bloemfontein region, the army said. "I can confirm that nine of our people have died and another 15 were injured and taken to various," a South African National Defence Force spokesperson said.
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/ 12 October 2007
Sihle Khumalo’s account of his independent travels in Africa has been praised by writers such as Zakes Mda and Paul Theroux. Khumalo tells <i>ZA@Play</i> more about his provocatively titled <i>Dark Continent My Black Arse</i>.
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/ 12 October 2007
The Zimbabwean government on Friday authorised new increases in the prices of basic foodstuffs in a bid to ease widespread shortages that followed an order for retailers to halve their tariffs. The National Incomes and Pricing Commission announced it had approved rises of between 50% and 200% for a range of staple foods.
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/ 12 October 2007
Renewed fighting broke out on Friday between the regular army and renegade troops in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) Nord-Kivu province, a local spokesperson with the United Nations mission in DRC said. "Clashes have been reported from Katsiru, a village between Mweso and Kitchanga," Monuc spokesperson Claude Cyrille said.
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/ 12 October 2007
Gold Fields, the world’s fourth-largest gold producer, will bring in close on R5-billion following the disposal of two of its international assets. The company said on Friday it was selling its assets in Venezuela for a total consideration of $532-million (R3,6-billion).
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/ 12 October 2007
Sudan’s National Congress Party (NCP) of President Omar al-Bashir on Friday criticised the decision by former southern rebels to withdraw from the Khartoum government. "The heart of the problem is that a group within the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement wants to end our partnership," the northern NCP’s number two, Nafie Ali Nafie, said.
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/ 12 October 2007
Zimbabwe’s agricultural production is poised to plummet further amid revelations that the country has secured less than 5% of the agricultural sector’s fuel requirements for the 2007/08 season. In a development likely to hurt the key tobacco sub-sector, only 9-million litres of fuel have been acquired by cash-strapped Harare authorities.
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/ 12 October 2007
A smokeless tobacco product, known as snus, is touted as being 90% less harmful than cigarettes, says a tobacco company, but anti-smoking activists aren’t convinced. Snus is finely ground moist tobacco, usually sold in small teabag-like sachets, that are placed under the upper lip against the gum.
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/ 12 October 2007
Corruption, political violence, "godfather" politics and general impunity threaten the stability of Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country and the world’s sixth-largest oil producer, a 100-page report released recently by the international NGO Human Rights Watch warns.
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/ 12 October 2007
South Africans stand back and passively watch the gravity-defying drop in public standards at our peril. One instance is the Judicial Service Commission’s decision to let off Cape Judge President John Hlophe with a slap on the wrist for conduct grossly unbecoming such a senior judge. One instance is the Judicial Service Commission’s decision to let off Cape Judge President John Hlophe with a slap on the wrist for conduct grossly unbecoming such a senior judge.
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/ 11 October 2007
Echoing recent protests at the University of the Witwatersrand, some students from the University of Johannesburg ran amok this week.
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/ 11 October 2007
The 2010 Soccer World Cup in South Africa has already generated record levels of revenue three years before it kicks off, the head of the local organising committee said on Thursday. Danny Jordaan told the South African Chamber of Commerce and Industry that doom merchants had been proved wrong.
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/ 11 October 2007
A self-professed art lover stood trial this week accused of damaging a $2-million painting by kissing it while wearing red lipstick. The deputy prosecutor in Avignon accused the defendant on Tuesday, Sam Rindy, of "savagery" for having left a lipstick smear on the work by United States artist Cy Twombly.
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/ 11 October 2007
Online video search service <i>blinkx</i> took on <i>Google</i> with the launch on Wednesday of a video advertising platform to challenge one released by the internet giant a day earlier. The <i>blinkx</i> AdHoc platform lets people embed ad-laced videos in their websites and then share in advertising revenues.
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/ 11 October 2007
Boeing ran into turbulence on its highly touted 787 Dreamliner programme, announcing a six-month delay for the new jet seen as the future profit driver for the United States aviation giant. Boeing said the first deliveries will not come until December 2008.
A priest who openly professed his love for a parishioner has been defrocked by the Italian Catholic Church despite an overwhelming show of support from his congregation, press reports said on Tuesday. Padua Bishop Antonio Mattiazzo issued a decree on Monday forbidding Don Sante Sguotti to hear confession in Monterosso, near the northern city of Padua.
<b>A reader asks:</b>
I am a retired 61-year-old guy, married, with my own house and no debts. But I will have to invest wisely and conservatively for my family’s future. This latest equity crash has made me very, very gun-shy of the stock market. How then would you recommend I invest?
National power utility Eskom on Tuesday cautioned that load-shedding was possible on Tuesday and for the rest of this week if electricity was not used sparingly and efficiently. This comes a day after Eskom warned that severe wet weather could cut power if it damaged electricity pylons and other critical electrical infrastructure.
<a href="http://www.mg.co.za/specialreport.aspx?area=rugbyworldcup07_home"><img src="http://www.mg.co.za/ContentImages/317644/icon_rwc_03.gif" align=left border=0></a>The International Rugby Board (IRB) has backed Wayne Barnes, who refereed the France-New Zealand World Cup quarterfinal, following reports that he had received death threats. The Englishman yellow-carded All Black centre Luke McAlister at a crucial moment of the game and also missed a forward pass in the move that brought France the match-winning try in their 20-18 triumph.
Authorities in ex-Soviet Georgia have turned to a new weapon in their struggle against rebel separatists in the breakaway region of South Ossetia: disco. Officials have announced that disco legends Boney M, known for such 1970s hits as <i>Rasputin</i> and <i>Daddy Cool</i>, will play a concert on Saturday in the tiny, Georgian-controlled village of Tamarasheni.
The global credit squeeze is a "serious crisis" that is not over yet and will have an impact on government budgets, International Monetary Fund (IMF) outgoing head Rodrigo Rato said in an interview published on Monday. IMF managing director Rato said: "Policymakers should not think that the problems will stay at the desk of the bankers."
Zambia’s southern city of Livingstone, which was approaching ghost town status a decade ago, has experienced a remarkable economic recovery kick-started by international investment in tourism infrastructure at Victoria Falls. The city that last saw a boom when the bridge was built over "the smoke that thunders" more than a century ago has been lifted from three decades of stagnation and a national economy gutted by the collapse of its textile and clothing industry.