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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
Pakistani Taliban fighters announced a ceasefire on Wednesday after months of clashes with security forces and suicide attacks across the north-west of the country. But a military spokesperson said that while fighting had died down no truce had been agreed.
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/ 6 February 2008
Dozens of tornadoes ripped across southern American states, causing severe damage and killing at least 45 people, officials and United States media said on Wednesday. More than 50 tornadoes touched down as a series of thunderstorms rare for the winter season rolled through the region late on Tuesday and early on Wednesday.
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/ 6 February 2008
The Democratic Alliance (DA) on Wednesday lauded the decision by the chairperson of Parliament’s standing committee on public accounts (Scopa), Themba Godi, to place the DA’s request for Scopa to reopen the arms-deal probe on the agenda.
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/ 6 February 2008
Any move by Britain to impose visa requirements on South Africans will have a serious effect on business and travel links between the two countries, the Democratic Alliance (DA) warned. British legislators were now examining evidence that might lead to such a visa requirement, the DA’s Tony Leon said.
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/ 6 February 2008
As Chinese prepare for Year of the Rat celebrations, roadside entrepreneurs in Thailand are serving rodent meat, uncooked or ready to eat, and customers are snapping it up for 150 baht (,82) a kilogram. These rats are the kind found in rice fields, not the filthy garbage-can-marauders familiar to city-dwellers.
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/ 6 February 2008
A Belgian tourist was robbed on Table Mountain by two men armed with knives, Cape Town police said on Wednesday. Captain Randall Stoffels said the men robbed the 56-year-old hiker of his camera, cellphone and an undisclosed amount of cash. The tourist was ascending Table Mountain through Skeleton Gorge when he was attacked.
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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
Ekurhuleni metro police head Robert McBride was awarded R200 000 of the R3,6-million damages claim he lodged against the Citizen in the Johannesburg High Court on Wednesday. The case concerned mainly editorial comment by acting editor Martin Williams and opinion in a column by freelancer Andrew Kenny in September and October 2003.
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/ 6 February 2008
Results of the latest MasterCard Worldwide Index of Consumer Confidence for the first half of 2008 show that consumer confidence in South Africa remains optimistic, despite a minor decrease from last year. Out of a possible score of 100, the South African index score decreased from 86,5 for the first half of 2007 to 83,7, it said in a statement on Wednesday.