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/ 9 December 2004
Belief in Father Christmas is beneficial — for children, a British psychiatrist said in an article published on Wednesday. Santa encourages boys and girls to be good, Lynda Breen of from Alder Hey Children’s hospital in Liverpool wrote in the December issue of the Psychiatric Bulletin.
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/ 9 December 2004
It is the oddest offer ever made available in shoe shops: ”Buy two, get a third for free.” Yet, this is precisely what two Milan-based entrepreneurs have come up with as they seek to break the monopoly of pairs and revolutionise a fashion principle that has resisted bravely for several thousand years.
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/ 9 December 2004
Libya said it would drop a case against five Bulgarian nurses condemned to death on charges of spreading HIV/Aids if Sofia paid out 10-million euros for every child infected with the virus at a Libyan hospital. The Bulgarian government has rejected the proposal, saying it would not pay compensation because it did not believe the nurses were guilty.
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/ 9 December 2004
Malaysian police have busted a brothel in an abandoned pigsty after housewives complained that their husbands spent a surprising amount of time there, police said on Thursday. The pigsty, with 20 cubicles, was furnished with tables, fans, a bar serving alcohol, neon lights and a sound system.
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/ 9 December 2004
A high-profile hunt for a mystery caged tiger allegedly being kept as a pet in Singapore has taken a new twist with Tiger Beer offering a year’s free supply of its brew for a successful tip-off. Fifty billboards offering the reward have been posted around the wealthy district where the tiger is believed to be kept.
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/ 9 December 2004
An Australian company launched a drug on Thursday that eliminates the need to castrate dogs, with what it claims is the world’s first pet contraceptive. Peptech said the drug suprelorin releases a hormone into a male dog’s bloodstream that reduces testosterone levels and renders it infertile.
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/ 9 December 2004
Australian police said on Thursday they have smashed a gang of rogue hairdressing-industry workers that staged a string of firebombings aimed at a rival in Sydney’s hair-products supply market. Police arrested three men in a series of raids late on Wednesday and charged them over 12 arson attacks on hair-product warehouses.
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/ 9 December 2004
KwaZulu-Natal women who lay charges of domestic violence and then withdraw them could face prosecution this festive season, provincial minister for safety and security Bheki Cele said on Thursday. Unveiling his festive-season security strategy, Cele said domestic violence usually increases considerably during this time.
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/ 9 December 2004
Zimbabwe’s government is subverting the country’s legal system in order to stay in power, according to an international group of lawyers who recently visited the Southern African state. In a report, Stephen Irwin, chairperson of the Bar of England and Wales, says the group found that judges and the courts have been "profoundly compromised".
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/ 9 December 2004
Philippine rescuers were on Thursday frantically digging for more survivors after four people, including a toddler, were pulled alive from a building crushed by a landslide 11 days ago. More than 120 people trapped under the two-storey building near the north-eastern town of Real had been given up for dead days ago.
Survival saga not unprecedented