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/ 7 December 2004
It was a romance that really had legs: young Aurora, a female giant octopus, and her aging cephalopod suitor J-1 were thrown together for a blind date seven months ago by aquarists who hoped the two would mate. By all appearances, their fling was a success, but the resulting eggs seemed sterile — until the aquarists started draining Aurora’s tank.
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/ 7 December 2004
The crucial Gold Fields shareholder vote on whether to merge Gold Fields’ international mining assets and those of Canada’s Iamgold is set to take place on Tuesday, with the result hanging in the balance. Gold Fields holds an extraordinary general meeting on the Iamgold transaction from 9am on Tuesday.
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/ 7 December 2004
Shareholders in Cashbuild have approved proposals that will pave the way for the building material retailer to sell a 10% stake in the company to its employee base of approximately 2 000 people across South Africa, of whom more than 90% qualify as historically disadvantaged South Africans.
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/ 7 December 2004
The Cape High Court on Monday viewed gruesome video footage of the badly decomposed body of Dutch exchange student Marleen Konings. The footage was too traumatic for Konings’s family, who left the courtroom during the viewing and returned later.
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/ 7 December 2004
Details about President Thabo Mbeki’s blood donations should not have been made public, the Minister of Health said on Monday. Manto Tshabalala-Msimang was concerned that the South African National Blood Service ”had failed to observe the principle of confidentiality in the handling of medical records”.
‘Please don’t stop donating blood’
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/ 7 December 2004
Former president Nelson Mandela’s eldest son is in a critical condition at a Johannesburg hospital, the Nelson Mandela Foundation said on Monday. Spokesperson Maretha Slabbert said Mandela was spending time at his son’s bedside. Makgatho is Mandela’s eldest child and only surviving son from his first marriage to Evelyn Ntoko Mase, a former nurse, in the 1940s.
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/ 7 December 2004
It has been acclaimed as one of the finest buildings in the United States, possibly anywhere. Its billowing stainless-steel walls, wrote one critic, are ”harmonious and incomparably beautiful, the colours changing depending on where the sun is”. It’s a pity the neighbours don’t see it that way.
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/ 7 December 2004
The Italians talk so much and so animatedly that visitors often wonder what on earth they can be discussing. Now a research firm has come up with the answer: each other. Urban Italians, it claims, spend an average of five hours a day gossiping. A survey found the most popular victims were work colleagues and that the place where most tittle-tattle was exchanged was the workplace.
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/ 7 December 2004
Eight United States soldiers serving in Iraq launched a legal challenge on Monday to stop their tours of duty from being extended. The lawsuit is the first of its kind by a group of US soldiers on active service in the country. The soldiers, seven of whom will remain anonymous out of fear of official retribution, are fighting against being forced to stay in their units after their period of enlistment has ended.
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/ 7 December 2004
The first act of the United States’s war on terrorism in 2001 was a blockbuster victory. As the twin towers still smouldered, US bombers and Afghan rebels drove the Taliban from power. Afghans emerged from the rubble to hear enthusiastic pledges of a phoenix-like resurrection for their wrecked country. Children would go to school, parents would have jobs, peace would prevail.