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/ 6 September 2004
Russian television on Monday paraded what officials said was the only suspected hostage-taker still alive of the gang who held 1 000 children and adults in a school in southern Russia for three days. Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Monday welcomed Israel’s offer of help in combating militant groups.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=BreakingNews-InternationalNews&ao=121696">Frantic search for missing in Beslan</a>
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/ 6 September 2004
Market talk is that Jabu Moleketi, the recently appointed Deputy Minister of Finance, will step into Trevor Manuel’s shoes. The <i>M&G</i> asked him about the BIG, Africa and the rumours about his future.
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/ 3 September 2004
"So there we were …" Mike van Graan has breakfast with the minister of arts and culture, and gets to chew the fat on topics ranging from free-trade agreements and their potentially adverse impact on culture, and the lack of skilled human resources to sustain cultural transformation.
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/ 3 September 2004
The children ensnared in the three-day hostage drama in North Ossetia will have probably suffered major psychological damage and some may never get over their ordeal completely, a French expert warned on Friday. "This case is of the gravest kind," he said. "The psychological problems will be major."
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/ 3 September 2004
John Dludlu, the editor of the <i>Sowetan</i> newspaper, has resigned from the company, Johnnic Communications announced on Friday. Former <i>Pretoria News</i> and <i>Sunday World</i> editor Thabo Leshilo is due to take over as editor-in-chief of both the <i>Sowetan</i> and <i>Sunday World</i> newspapers.
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/ 3 September 2004
The official opposition Democratic Alliance has welcomed Communications Minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri’s overhaul of the telecommunications sector by loosening the grip of the current fixed line monopoly, Telkom. "Telkom’s stranglehold on the internet and value-added network services has been holding South Africa back," said shadow communications minister Dene Smuts.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=BreakingNews-Business&ao=121577">Minister eases ICT restrictions</a>
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/ 3 September 2004
Rapid growth in expenditure on social grants is squeezing government spending on health, education and other essential services, forcing it to reconsider the way it is financing its major development programmes. Figures released by the National Treasury this week show provincial spending on social grants doubled between 2000/01 and 2003/04. And, government spending on grants is set to grow by another 50%.
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/ 3 September 2004
Once upon a time there was a wonderful land where the loveliest of rainbows was always in the sky. Even at night this loveliest of rainbows shed its gentle and healing light on the happy people who lived under it. There were two kinds of happy people living in The Land of the Loveliest Rainbow: the Lucky Few and the Unlucky Many. And they couldn’t be more different …
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/ 3 September 2004
The number of Aids cases in Japan is slowly increasing, and the number of HIV-positive people in the country is estimated to be far higher than the number reported. In 2003 the government recorded 336 new Aids cases but only 640 new HIV cases, a number that was “far lower than expected.” Since Japan began tracking HIV/Aids cases in 1985, the government has recorded 2 892 Aids cases and 5 780 HIV cases.
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/ 3 September 2004
Listening to Metropolitan Trading Company (MTC) CEO Keith Atkins, one might think the City of Johannesburg had brought its street traders under control.
British-born Atkins has inherited daunting challenges from Rory Robertshaw, the previous head of the council-owned MTC. After piloting the city’s first "modern" market in Yeoville’s Rockey Street for R5-million, Robertshaw called it quits.
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/ 3 September 2004
Richard Worthington’s reply to my report on electricity ("A dirty old soul") has the hallmarks of aggressive ideological writing typical of militant environmentalists. South Africa’s worst problem is poverty, not damage to the environment by coal mined and burned in power stations — at both stages according to modern best practice. Robin Friedland exercises his right to reply.
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/ 3 September 2004
Three of the five drivers of the African rescue plan, New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad), had their work cut out this week dealing with conflict and crisis on the continent. President Thabo Mbeki took no fewer than seven of his Cabinet members to Kinshasa for the bi-national commission aimed at beefing up political and economic ties with the Democratic Republic of Congo.
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/ 2 September 2004
It looks like 2004 is going to be a bumper year for the South African motor industry — reflecting the strength of consumer and business spending at the moment, which is likely to continue. The motor industry produced another excellent sales month in August, exceeding sales during the same month last year by 18,8%.
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/ 2 September 2004
Cape Town pharmacies reopened on Thursday after a one-day protest over threats of arrest if they charged more than new medicine pricing laws allow. On Wednesday, one pharmacist had said the pharmacies "will stay closed until we get leave to appeal. People will have to go to state facilities for their medicine."
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=BreakingNews-National&ao=121466">Pharmacies close after customer threats</a>
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/ 2 September 2004
South Africa has all the trappings for clean, graft-free government. There is a public protector, a forthcoming anti-corruption law, and a Register of Members’ Interests in which all MPs are supposed to disclose their assets. But for a confidential section, the register is a public document and the latest edition was opened up for public scrutiny last week.
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/ 2 September 2004
"There’s the smell of revolution in the air this week, both to the north of us as well as over in the United States, where the Republican Party reptiles are gathering in New York. And this past week saw the closing down of the only apparent opposition party in Zimbabwe. Was the Movement for Democratic Change a bona fide opposition party, or simply a ‘cut-out’?" Web crawler extraordinaire Ian Fraser ponders the political.
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/ 1 September 2004
Two members of environmental action group Earthlife Africa climbed on top of the Sandton Convention Centre on Wednesday afternoon and then abseiled over the edge, unfurling a six-storey-high yellow banner saying "Don’t let big business rule the world".
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/ 1 September 2004
West Africa should enlist the military to win the war on locusts, Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade said on Tuesday, as locust swarms reached the capital, Dakar, swirling around in the sky like yellow snowflakes. Children made impromptu attempts to kill the locusts, kicking and swiping at them with sticks.
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/ 1 September 2004
Alleged coup financier Mark Thatcher will pay his bail by the end of the week, his lawyer said on Wednesday, but declined to comment on a report that his mother, former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, is posting the money for her son. Thatcher is under house arrest at his Cape Town home.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=BreakingNews-National&ao=121438">Margaret Thatcher posts bail for Mark</a>
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/ 1 September 2004
South African information technology company Dimension Data (Didata) said on Wednesday that agreement has been reached with a black economic empowerment consortium on the transfer of a 25,01% interest in Dimension Data South Africa. The stake has been valued at R380-million.
Official opposition leader Tony Leon led nine Democratic Alliance (DA) councillors on a march from the Cape Town metropolitan council on Tuesday to protest at the way in which the Big Bay tender — a prime 14ha piece of real estate near Blaauwberg — has been handled.
The trial of 19 people accused of plotting a coup in Equatorial Guinea was suspended indefinitely on Tuesday at the request of the prosecution, the court said.
"The affair has an international dimension, there are inquiries outside the country that are beyond the remit of this tribunal," said presiding Judge Salvador Ondo.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=121342">’Is it normal to be tortured?'</a>
A robust performance, combined with strong organic growth and increased efficiencies across all its businesses, saw health and life group Discovery lift operating profits by a whopping 102% to R708-million for the year ended June 30. Discovery Life increased profits by 138% to R27-million.
Arms manufacturer Denel on Tuesday reported a R377,5-million net loss for the year ended March 31 2004, from gross revenues of R4,442-billion. Minister of Public Enterprises Alec Erwin, speaking at the release of Denel’s year-end results, said Denel will remain a state-owned enterprise.
South Africa’s real gross domestic product (GDP) at market prices on a quarter-on-quarter (q/q) seasonally annualised and adjusted basis rose by 3,9% in the second quarter of 2004 from a revised 3,6% increase in the first quarter of 2004. Dawie Roodt, chief economist at the Efficient Group, said: "The number is a bit better than we expected."
When Tony Cooper and Lisa Kingscott left their four-seater light plane parked in a field to have lunch with friends nearby, they paid little attention to the cows quietly grazing nearby. When they returned, they were astonished to find that the herd had developed an unlikely taste for its fuselage and were munching their way through a large section.
At an Aids support centre operated by Freedom Foundation, a private charity in Bangalore, the beautiful brown eyes of Rajni, a young Indian mother, look into a bleak future. Married at 14, she became a widow at 20 when her husband, who ran a small business, died of Aids-related illnesses — and she tested positive for HIV. A new initiative has been launched to help young women protect themselves against HIV.
The world could face a humanitarian failure if up to half a million refugees return to southern Sudan in the event of a final peace deal between rebels and government forces before the end of the year, the United Nations warned on Monday. Peace talks in Kenya are aimed at ending 21 years of devastating conflict in Sudan.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=121313">Hunger stalks Darfur’s refugees</a>
Alleged mercenaries Harry Carlse and Lourens Horn have been charged for contravening the Foreign Military Assistance Act. Carlse and Horn arrived home from Zimbabwe on Saturday after a Harare court acquitted them on weapons charges on Friday.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=121328">Forsyth’s fiction close to the facts</a>
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=121284">Trial resumes in Equatorial Guinea</a>
It’s a frustrated commuter’s escapist fantasy: literally lifting your car from a clogged highway and soaring through the skies, landing just in time to motor into your driveway. Engineers at Nasa, the Boeing Company and elsewhere say the basis for a flying car is there. At Nasa, the first goal is to transform small airplane travel.
The intensive transformation process undertaken by the South African Post Office over the past three years is starting to reap rewards for the parastatal. Regarded by many at one stage as the Cinderella of the state-owned enterprises, the post office has for the first time in its 200-year history posted a profit.
Responding to the need to protect clients’ fixed-deposit investment returns against potential volatility, Investec Private Bank’s Treasury team has created HedgePlus, a six-month, prime-linked fixed deposit, designed to hedge against fluctuations in returns using three leading economic factors.