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/ 22 November 2005

My life as a penguin

Torquay, on the south coast of England (and a prime British holiday resort), is surely one of the most inhospitable places on the planet. Not if you’re a penguin, though. For the black and white inhabitants of Living Coasts, Torquay’s harbourside zoo, the term "English riviera" holds no bleak tinge of irony even during the so-called "shoulder season".

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/ 22 November 2005

The end of a learning curve

Parktown Girls’ High School, north of Johannesburg, this month says goodbye to five out-of-the-ordinary Grade 12s. The school enrolled five deaf learners in 2001, but has been forced to decline any further applications from disabled learners because the cost of teaching them is prohibitive.

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/ 22 November 2005

Winnie’s advisor to serve sentence

Winnie Madikizela-Mandela’s former financial adviser Addy Moolman is to finally start serving his four-year jail sentence, the Pretoria High Court heard on Monday. Judge M Legodi on Monday dismissed with costs Moolman’s urgent application for bail, pending an application to the Constitutional Court about the constitutionality of his sentence.

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/ 21 November 2005

Winnie’s former adviser ordered to jail

Winnie Madikizela-Mandela’s former financial adviser Addy Moolman is finally to start serving his four-year jail sentence, the Pretoria High Court heard on Monday. Judge MF Legodi on Monday dismissed Moolman’s urgent application for bail, pending an application to the Constitutional Court about the constitutionality of his sentence.

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/ 21 November 2005

Zambia declares national food disaster

Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa on Monday declared a national disaster and appealed to the international community for food aid after government estimates showed that 1,2-million people face famine. Zambia became the second country in drought-hit Southern Africa to declare a national disaster following Malawi.

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/ 21 November 2005

‘I remember the eerie sound of silence’

Alfred Anderson, the last surviving person to have heard the guns fall silent along the Western Front during the spontaneous ”Christmas Truce” of World War I, died on Monday at the age of 109. Anderson’s parish priest, the Reverend Neil Gardner, said he died in his sleep early on Monday at a nursing home in Newtyle, Scotland.

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/ 21 November 2005

Hezbollah bombards Israeli positions on border

Lebanese militant group Hezbollah launched an intense bombardment of Israeli positions on the volatile border on Monday, triggering retaliatory Israeli air strikes, with one person reportedly killed. The flare-up came amid political turmoil in Israel following Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s call for early elections he plans to contest at the head of a new centrist party.