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/ 30 October 2006
A year after the United States narrowly avoided a bruising row with the rest of the world over control of the internet, round two of talks on the web’s future opened in Greece on Monday in a United Nations-sponsored forum on internet governance. Over 1 000 internet experts from 90 countries are participating in the forum, established by the Tunis World Summit on the Information Society.
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/ 30 October 2006
After making the announcement a week ago, Gold Fields, the world’s third largest gold producer, has officially listed on the Dubai International Financial Exchange. "The DIFX is the gateway to a significant pool of liquidity in the Gulf, Middle East and Central Asian region," said chief executive Ian Cockerill in a statement.
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/ 30 October 2006
Lawyers for ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein returned to court on Monday to present a list of conditions for ending their boycott of his genocide trial but left after they were rebuffed. Chief defence counsel Khalil al-Dulaimi and another member of the defence team filed into the Iraqi High Tribunal for the hearing, but instead of listening to evidence made a string of complaints.
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/ 30 October 2006
New high-tech advances were making internet crimes against children easier for paedophiles to commit and more difficult to detect, experts told a conference in Australia on Monday. Faster broadband, DSL and cable connections have contributed to an increase in paedophile activity on the internet, the 19th Computer Facilitated Crimes Against Children conference heard.
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/ 30 October 2006
Rescue teams recovered the bodies of the two remaining miners trapped underground at AngloGold Ashanti’s Tau Tona mine near Carletonville at the weekend. The recovery of all five missing miners was completed five days after the fall of ground at the mine, following two seismic events on Monday afternoon.
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/ 30 October 2006
What a wonderful breakfast I had last Sunday morning, served up courtesy of SABC group CE Dali Mpofu. For those of you who missed it, Mpofu declared in the pages of City Press that the <i>Mail & Guardian</i>’s decision to put the "commission of inquiry into blacklisting and related matters" report online was not in the public interest, writes Ferial Haffajee.
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/ 30 October 2006
While African economies concentrate on agriculture and industry, tourism has been paid scant attention, despite its potential to deliver economic growth. This was the view of Dan Kagagi, CE of the Tourism Trust Fund in Kenya, who was addressing delegates to the African Business Leaders Forum in Johannesburg last week.
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/ 30 October 2006
Anglo American broke firmly with its colonial recently, appointing an outsider and woman, Cynthia Carroll, as chief executive. The announcement surprised many as Anglo has a tradition of appointing insiders who are familiar with the company’s corporate culture and history.
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/ 28 October 2006
Britain puts its clocks back one hour at 2am (1am GMT) on Sunday, giving most people a welcome extra hour in bed — but two cuckoo-clock enthusiasts will have precious little time on their hands. Brothers Roman and Maz Piekarski have more than 500 clocks at their Cuckooland museum in Cheshire, north-west England.
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/ 27 October 2006
Peace talks to end northern Uganda’s brutal, two-decade war have snagged as the government and Lord’s Resistance Army rebels bicker over revisions to a landmark truce, officials said on Friday. Despite optimistic claims of a breakthrough in a deadlock, the rebels said they had not yet agreed on the renewal of the late August truce.
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/ 27 October 2006
Prosecution witnesses in the coup-plot trial of Ethiopian opposition figures testified on Friday that the accused sought to foment an armed rebellion after disputed elections last year. They told a court that leaders of the opposition Coalition for Unity and Democracy encouraged them to take up arms against the government.
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/ 27 October 2006
Shares in media and entertainment group Johnnic Communications jumped more than 11% to an all- time high on the JSE on Friday after news that the group had received an offer to dispose of its stake in M-Net and Supersport which it was
reviewing.
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/ 27 October 2006
South Africa’s Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang was discharged from the Johannesburg General Hospital on Friday, her office said in a statement. The minister — who received treatment for a lung infection — said in the statement: "I am very glad that I have been discharged today [Friday] after being in the hospital for the past three weeks.
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/ 27 October 2006
Media and entertainment group Johnnic Communications on Friday confirmed that it has received an offer for the disposal of its shareholding in M-Net and SuperSport, which the board is currently reviewing — news which saw the group’s share price jump to an all-time high.
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/ 27 October 2006
The retail price of all grades of petrol will decline by 21c per litre from Wednesday November 1, the Department of Minerals and Energy said on Friday. The wholesale price of diesel 0,05% sulphur will decline by 2c a litre and that of 0,005% sulphur will fall by 1c a litre on the same date.
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/ 27 October 2006
Domestic inflationary pressures in South Africa remain on the boiler, despite the pullback in international energy prices, according to Moody’s <i>Economy.com</i>. Benchmark oil continues to hover around the $60 mark, dipping about 30% from its August peak in response to improved supply-side dynamics such as easing tensions in the Middle East.
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/ 27 October 2006
Cut trade barriers, unclog the labour market and boost competition: the national treasury wants more aggressive liberalisation of the economy to boost growth, rather than protective tariffs, quotas and industrial incentives. This approach has put team finance at loggerheads with other government departments.
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/ 27 October 2006
EThekwini municipal manager Mike Sutcliffe is sitting on a damning Independent Complaints Directorate (ICD) report detailing "lax control" of hundreds of firearms and ammunition issued by the state to the Durban Metro Police Service. The report lists 66 state-issued firearms as missing and being investigated by the police.
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/ 27 October 2006
Last week saw the 20th anniversary of the air accident in which Mozambican president Samora Machel lost his life along with some 25 other passengers on a Soviet-built and crewed Tupolev TU-134 aircraft. Few will deny that Machel’s death was a grave loss to his country and, in a wider sense, to African politics. What cannot be denied are the extraordinary and often quite bizarre circumstances surrounding investigations into the crash.
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/ 26 October 2006
South African Airways (SAA) is to add extra flights to certain of its domestic routes over the holiday season due to huge demand from customers. The airline experienced its busiest month in September, having carried a record total of 704 000 passengers on its domestic, regional and international flights.
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/ 26 October 2006
South Africa’s producer price index (PPI) rose by 9% year-on-year (y/y) in September from a 9,2% y/y increase in August, Statistics South Africa said on Thursday. The PPI declined -0,7%% on a monthly basis after August’s monthly rise of 1,5%.
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/ 26 October 2006
The Dubai World and London & Regional Properties consortium on Thursday announced plans to invest more than $1-billion in the V&A Waterfront over the next four years, following its successful purchase of the development last month. The bulk of the new developments could be completed before 2010, when South Africa hosts the Soccer World Cup.
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/ 26 October 2006
The total number of foreign travellers who visited South Africa during May was 641 700 — up 15,1% compared with May 2005, according to data released by Statistics South Africa on Thursday. In addition, the number of foreign travellers who departed the country in May was 582 120 -– 13,5% more than during May 2005.
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/ 26 October 2006
This week Finance Minister Trevor Manuel became the king of bling. The mini-budget released this week is replete with showy and insubstantial spending. South Africa is to splurge — on 2010; on the Gautrain; and on a series of sometimes dubious industrial projects. What’s going on?
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/ 25 October 2006
Fighters loyal to Somalia’s weak government and powerful Islamist movement girded for battle on Wednesday outside the government’s temporary seat in Baidoa, as tensions between the rivals soared. Amid conflicting statements, government troops dug trenches around the town, preparing for a feared advance, witnesses said.
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/ 25 October 2006
Music and entertainment retailer Musica has launched Musica Megastores, which will offer customers more than 30 000 CD and DVD titles in its large-format stores. The first four Musica Megastores have been converted from CD Wherehouse, the other specialist music brand in the New Clicks stable.
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/ 25 October 2006
The increase in South Africa’s consumer price index excluding mortgage rate changes (CPIX) for metro and other areas, which is used by the South African Reserve Bank for its inflation target, was up 5,1% year-on-year (y/y) in September after a 5% y/y increase in August.
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/ 25 October 2006
South African specialist banker Investec Bank was on Wednesday announced by the Australian Rugby Union as the new naming rights partner for the highly successful Super 14 tournament for the next four years, to the end of the current Sanzar broadcast deal. The tournament, which kicks off on Friday February 2 2007, will be known in Australia as the Investec Super 14.
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/ 25 October 2006
Australia on Wednesday announced plans for the world’s biggest solar power plant under a Aus$500-million ($375-million) radical rethink on climate change. The government said it would contribute Aus$75-million towards a Aus$420-million solar-power concentrator in the first of a series of projects aimed at reducing the greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming.
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/ 25 October 2006
Hospital costs are now almost 70% higher than they should be, because of the increased market dominance of a few private hospitals. This is the argument of the Council for Medical Schemes, which, along with Netcare, is opposing Medi-Clinic’s proposed takeover of four hospitals in the Vaal Triangle. Competition Tribunal hearings into the matter were held recently.
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/ 24 October 2006
Rwanda on Tuesday opened public hearings into an alleged French role in the 1994 genocide that left at least 800Â 000 people dead in the Central African nation. A former senior Rwandan official testified that Paris had indeed supported the perpetrators of the genocide in order to protect a French-speaking nation from rebels backed by an English-speaking country.
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/ 24 October 2006
South Africa’s information technology industry (IT) will need 115 000 professionals ahead of the World Cup in 2010 with Microsoft Certified System Engineers (MCSE) in critical short supply, local IT group said on Tuesday. IT Intellect’s Cape Town branch manager, Shaun Quin, said the mindset that the IT industry was flooded with MCSE’s was wrong as many of them had never been re-skilled on new software.