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/ 17 October 2007
An Austrian baker who made his staff pay for the time they spent in the toilet has been forced to end the practice to avoid a court case, a lawyer said this week. The owner of the bakery in Eisenstadt recorded toilet visits on a computer and took the value of the bathroom time off their annual holiday bonus.
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/ 17 October 2007
A Cambodian cow arrested by authorities last week after causing a string of traffic deaths was butchered by its owner to prevent future highway carnage, police said on Tuesday. The large animal had repeatedly escaped its enclosure and wandered into a nearby road.
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/ 17 October 2007
Regular swearing at work can help boost team spirit among staff, allowing them to express better their feelings as well as develop social relationships, according to a study by British researchers. They assessed that swearing will become more common as traditional taboos are broken down.
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/ 17 October 2007
Fears of an imminent eruption prompted the evacuation of thousands of residents near Indonesia’s Mount Kelud on Wednesday, but many flouted the order and stayed at their homes around the rumbling Javanese volcano. The alert on the volcano, one of Indonesia’s deadliest and located 90km south-west of its second-largest city, Surabaya, was raised to maximum late on Tuesday.
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/ 17 October 2007
South Africa’s Northam Platinum said on Wednesday it expected to lose about 1 000 ounces per day of output after shutting its mine early on Tuesday when a worker was killed in a rockfall. The mine — the world’s deepest platinum mine — produces about 325 000 PGM ounces of platinum a year.
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/ 17 October 2007
The United States local food movement has gone mainstream, with a boost from environmentalists who reckon that eating what grows nearby cuts down on global warming. But do food miles — the distance edibles travel from farm to plate — give an accurate gauge of environmental impact?
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/ 17 October 2007
There has been an ”alarming” increase over the past year in the deadly dust disease silicosis among workers on South Africa’s gold and platinum mines, MPs heard on Wednesday. Mine doctors submitted 1 031 cases of silicosis to the Medical Bureau of Occupational Diseases in 2005.
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/ 17 October 2007
The Home Affairs Department’s refugee office in Cape Town was a ”chaotic” place at which refugees were treated like animals, a parliamentary committee said on Wednesday. The MPs, on an unannounced visit, also discovered that refugees were being illegally detained by officials.
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/ 17 October 2007
Up to 60 Somali intelligence officers stormed a United Nations compound in Mogadishu on Wednesday and seized the World Food Programme’s local chief of operations at gunpoint. WFP said it was forced to suspend food distribution, which started on Monday, to more than 75 000 people in the capital Mogadishu.
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/ 17 October 2007
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Churches should encourage a diversity of opinions and frank debate in the run-up up to the African National Congress’s election of its new leadership in December, the South African Council of Churches (SACC) said on Wednesday. ”Processes relating to elections are critical for the strength of democracy in our country,” said the SACC.