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/ 31 October 2007

Tourism threatens one of East Asia’s top diving spots

A tropical island off the coast of Taiwan has become a victim of its own success as pollution caused by a recent spike in tourism threatens its reputation as the best diving spot in East Asia. The aptly named 15 square kilometre Green Island, an hour’s ferry ride from Taiwan’s main isle, is fast losing its lustre due to garbage and excrement dumped into its azure waters and shrinking reefs plundered by coral-robbing tourists.

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/ 31 October 2007

Bargain nip and tuck draws tourists to South America

Canadian lobster and tuna fisherman Everett Condon had never travelled further south than the United States until this year, when he spent his off-season going to tango shows and getting plastic surgery in Argentina. Like thousands of others, mostly from the United States, Europe and Canada, Condon was drawn to South America’s attractive exchange rates and reputable doctors who are highly skilled due to a local rage for cosmetic surgery.

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/ 31 October 2007

Swedes get a buzz visiting nuclear plants

It’s not everyone’s dream destination, but in Sweden thousands of visitors each year head to remote coastland to view the nation’s nuclear power plants. At Forsmark, one of the country’s three nuclear plants, tourists wear protective clothing and carry dosimeters, which monitor their radiation exposure.

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/ 31 October 2007

The descent into a feral state

Today in South Africa we have a growing element of people who, because of the level of brutality they exhibit, could be classified as feral in their actions — feral meaning wild and untamed, as defined by the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English, writes Mary R Tomlinson.

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/ 31 October 2007

The bogeyman of modern science

For a room in which one of the most astonishing experiments in modern science is being conducted, the laboratory in the J Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Maryland, is understated. It is divided into wooden workstations reminiscent of a school science lab. There are stacks of glass test tubes and pipettes, and one wall is lined with air-controlled boxes containing Petri dishes, writes Ed Pilkington.

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/ 31 October 2007

What women want: neanderthals in rugby shirts

The Big Game was a victory for The Real Man and a crushing defeat for the illusion that we will ever admire anything as much as a good bit of bone-crunching. Sure, we’ll nod and smile in the general direction of the man wearing the Amanda Laird Cherry shirt and the baby carrier. Even rugby players appear in <i>GQ</i> and <i>Cosmo</i> Man spreads, wearing fine suits and not running into one another.