Staff Reporter
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/ 2 March 2005

Adopt a highway to help fight alien plants

The National Association of Conservancies of South Africa is selling advertising on highways to help pay for clear-up operations to remove alien plants, the organisation said on Wednesday. The ”adopt a highway” project is run in much the same way as ”adopt an animal” programmes in zoos, said project coordinator Dave Peters.

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/ 2 March 2005

Africa remains weak link in fight against drugs

Africa remains the world’s weak spot in the fight against drugs because most countries on the continent lack the means to combat trafficking, the International Narcotics Control Board has warned. It said while cannabis remains ”a major issue of concern” throughout Africa, the trade in cocaine and heroin was also on the rise.

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/ 2 March 2005

Zimbabwe to unveil new currency next year

Zimbabwe will introduce a new currency next year, phasing out bank notes introduced two years ago as a stop-gap measure to ease critical cash shortages across the country, a government daily reported on Wednesday. ”Production is at full throttle as we speak,” the state-owned Herald newspaper quoted a central bank official saying.

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/ 2 March 2005

Woman sues city for perfume exposure

A woman has filed a lawsuit against the United States city of Norwalk for exposure to her colleagues’ perfumes and colognes, alleging officials have failed to lessen her exposure to such scents in the town clerk’s office and that she is being harrassed. She is also seeking an unspecified amount of monetary damages and attorney’s fees.

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/ 2 March 2005

Town ponders destroying ‘cursing stone’

The Cursing Stone of Carlisle was intended simply as an innocent community art project, harking back to the British city’s colourful past. But following floods, disease and a string of other local misfortunes, town elders are considering whether the £10 000 (R110 000) art work should be removed and destroyed, a report said on Wednesday.

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/ 2 March 2005

Iranian woman in smelly divorce bid

An Iranian woman is trying to set a legal precedent by divorcing her husband because he has not showered for more than a year, a press report said on Wednesday. The 36-year-old woman, only identified as Mina, reportedly told a Tehran court that her husband, Reza, smells so bad that even his children will not go near him.

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/ 2 March 2005

Church group calls for action on Tutu insult

The South African Council of Churches has asked the African National Congress to act against one of its members of Parliament who called Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu’s views on transformation ”treasonous”. It called on the ANC ”to attend to the matter urgently” and to champion the rights of all citizens to express their views on South Africa’s democracy.

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/ 2 March 2005

Authorities to shoot man-eating crocodile

Conservation authorities at the Greater St Lucia Wetland Park have decided to shoot a huge old crocodile that attacked and killed a fisherman this week, KwaZulu-Natal Wildlife said on Wednesday. But resident Petrus Viviers said he was surprised that Elder had been attacked. He said residents are likely to object to the plans to shoot the killer crocodile.

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/ 2 March 2005

SA’s Oscar nominees back in Jo’burg

”We are going to keep on until we get one of those buggers,” says Darrell James Roodt, director of South Africa’s Oscar-nominated film Yesterday. Roodt, producers Anant Singh and Helena Spring, and actress Leleti Khumalo arrived back in Johannesburg on Wednesday after a nail-biting time in Los Angeles for the Oscar awards ceremony.

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/ 2 March 2005

Lions left behind ‘tasty morsel’

Why was a ”tasty morsel” such as a finger left intact by the lions that attacked Nelson Chisale, a pathologist asked in the Phalaborwa Circuit Court on Wednesday. The pathologist is testifying in defence of Mark Scott-Crossley, who is accused with Simon Mathebula of murdering Chisale, who was viciously assaulted before being fed to lions.