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/ 22 February 2005
Retired top South African referee Andre Watson has lauded the Sanzar executive committee on its decision to scrap the requirement to appoint franchise-neutral referees for local derbies in the Vodacom Rugby Super 12 contest. Sanzar said the decision comes into effect this week when the competition kicks off in South Africa, New Zealand and Australia.
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/ 22 February 2005
Egyptian doctors have successfully operated on a two-headed baby, removing the second head and neck to leave a normal baby girl after the successful operation, surgeons said on Saturday. "The operation lasted 15 hours and it was a complete success," said hospital director Nazif Hefnawi, in the delta governorate of Banha.
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/ 22 February 2005
An Australian trout farm announced a Aus$1 000 dollar (R4 600) reward on Monday for the capture of a giant eel baptised "Nessie’s offspring" that has suddenly appeared in breeding ponds and begun eating up the fish. Visitors who have seen the creature said it is about 4m long with a head the size of a football.
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/ 22 February 2005
A mystery man in a surgical mask and cap bought the most expensive car licence plate sold in Hong Kong since 1997, paying HK$7,1-million (about R5,3-million), a Hong Kong newspaper said on Monday. The winner bought the plate number 12 — which sounds like "certainly easy" in Cantonese.
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/ 22 February 2005
It was billed as a chance for British Minister of Finance Gordon Brown to quiz China’s young elite about what they want from the future. And he got his answer — more Harry Potter memorabilia. In a lengthy question-and-answer session, Brown, currently on a three-day visit to China, chatted to about a dozen teenage pupils, all star English students.
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/ 22 February 2005
The state asked the Constitutional Court on Tuesday for a second chance at prosecuting apartheid-era chemical and biological warfare expert Dr Wouter Basson on six charges of conspiracy to murder. The alleged victims were ”enemies” of the then South African government, in London, Mozambique, Namibia and Swaziland.
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/ 22 February 2005
As Information Minister, Jonathan Moyo made his reputation as the architect of the government’s campaign to silence criticism, and still had time to get his own jingles aired on state television. Moyo was fired over the weekend, but he has left a legacy of laws that effectively deny government critics a means of disseminating information.
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/ 22 February 2005
Peace talks between Ugandan authorities and the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army will go on beyond the end this week of a unilateral government ceasefire, officials said on Tuesday. However, as the talks continue, Kampala will press ahead with military operations against the rebels, whose ranks the government maintains have been decimated.
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/ 22 February 2005
South African oil and chemicals group Sasol on Tuesday touched an all-time high on the JSE Securities Exchange (JSE) on the group’s strong earnings outlook. On Tuesday, Sasol announced that it expects that its headline earnings per share for the half-year ending December 2004 to be about 60% higher than in the previous comparative period.
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/ 22 February 2005
Foreign ministers from 15 African countries have agreed to press demands for Africa to be granted two veto-wielding permanent seats at the United Nations Security Council, ambassadors said on Tuesday. The ministers are to draw up a response to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan’s blueprint for UN reform.