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/ 17 October 2005
Come election time, the Delmas municipality may regret neglecting its only cricket ground and allowing it to be taken over by soccer clubs. It could also rue threats to evict a volunteer organisation helping disabled children from a government-built facility. But it will definitely suffer from its own ”Watergate” — the handling of the typhoid outbreak that hit the town between August and September.
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/ 17 October 2005
If you are one of those people who drops off instantly into a deep sleep every night, then the chances are you inherited the ability from your parents. For those who toss and turn there is no hope: good sleep is encoded in the genes, say researchers. Hans-Peter Landolt and his team at the University of Zurich compared the sleep patterns and DNA of two groups.
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/ 17 October 2005
The Boys from Brazil is one of Julian Savulescu’s favourite movies. That would not raise an eyebrow, were it not for the fact that his main interest as Uehiro professor of practical ethics at Oxford University is ”biological enhancement” — also known as ”the new eugenics”. Savulescu’s views on cloning and the improvement of the body have caused controversy before.
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/ 17 October 2005
After weeks of rumour and intrigue Germany finally got what everyone had expected on Monday — a grand coalition led by Angela Merkel. But as the week progressed there were growing doubts about how long such a coalition would last and what, if anything, it would achieve.
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/ 17 October 2005
A father sodomising his son, a serial killer rapist strangling victims with their G-strings, real-time domestic violence, a hijacker who beats up his girlfriend’s father, a vigilante Zulu ibutho with a machete,explicit sex scenes … these are just some of the images in Mpumelelo Paul Grootboom’s Relativity: Township Stories, currently showing at the State Theatre in Pretoria.
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/ 17 October 2005
Members of the Basarwa, an ancient tribe of hunter-gatherers, submitted an urgent application in court on Wednesday to bar the Botswana government from seizing their livestock and preventing their people from entering the Central Kalahari Game Reserve.
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/ 17 October 2005
It is evening and the beautiful, tanned 40-year-old woman picks up her cellphone as she glides home in her Ferrari. ”I’ll be back in five minutes and I want tuna carpaccio,” she barks into the handset to her personal chef. In the back of the car, two children stare through the smoked windows as the gates of the luxury villa open.
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/ 16 October 2005
While they can have a sense of humour about it, the search for the legendary Sasquatch is no joke for many of the nearly 400 people who attended the Texas Bigfoot Conference to discuss the latest sightings and tracking techniques. Outlandish theories about the origin of Bigfoot abound.
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/ 16 October 2005
The growing threat of lethal bird flu spreading across Europe will soar to the top of European Union leaders’ menu this week, after the deadly Asian strain of the virus landed on the continent for the first time. The H5N1 virus was confirmed in Romania at the weekend, only two days after its presence was identified in Turkey.
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/ 16 October 2005
United Nations agencies are warning that five million of Malawi’s 12-million people are facing hunger after the worst drought in more than a decade drastically cut production of maize, the staple food in this Southern African country. President Bingu wa Mutharika on Saturday declared the food crisis a national disaster.