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/ 15 March 2006

Swine fever detected in Uitenhage

Swine fever has been detected at Uitenhage in the Nelson Mandela Metro and about a thousand pigs will be culled this week, the South African Broadcasting Corporation reported on Wednesday. Road blocks have been set up around KwaNobuhle in Uitenhage in an effort to contain it, but this measure does not seem to work as the disease has continued to spread throughout the province.

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/ 15 March 2006

Sony to delay launch of PlayStation 3 to November

Sony will delay the launch of the PlayStation 3 by half a year until November, a report said on Wednesday, boosting Microsoft’s efforts to win a bigger share of the multibillion-dollar video game industry. The next-generation home video game console is one of Sony’s core products and its success against Microsoft’s already-launched Xbox 360 is considered vital to its revival after a profit slump.

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/ 15 March 2006

US doubts threaten to sink new rights body

Ambitious plans to reform the United Nations in the wake of the oil-for-food scandal and the Iraq schism have yet to amount to much. But one issue on which world leaders attending last September’s summit in New York did agree was the need to strengthen UN monitoring, protection and enforcement of universal standards of human rights.

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/ 15 March 2006

Hayes quits South Park after it satirises Scientology

Criticising the hit United States television series South Park for being offensive is a bit like criticising Antiques Roadshow for focusing too much on old things. But this has not prevented the soul singer Isaac Hayes from quitting the show in outrage at its treatment of Scientology — ending a nine-year association with a cartoon that has left few other religious or political groups unmocked.

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/ 15 March 2006

Pentagon’s new weapon: Cyborg flies that are spies

The Pentagon is trying to develop ”insect cyborgs” able to sniff out explosives, or ”bug” conversations by lurking unseen in enemy hideouts with micro-transmitters strapped to their bodies. The cyborgs — half insect, half robot — would be created by inserting tiny devices into the bodies of flying, hopping or crawling insects while in their larva or pupa stage.