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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
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/ 9 December 2004
The six-year-old boy struck by lightning on a Pretoria golf course on Wednesday is still in a very critical and unstable condition, the Pretoria East hospital said on Thursday. His internal organs have suffered from the heat and electricity that surged through him in the lightning strike that killed his father, paramedic Roger Owen-Ellis.
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/ 9 December 2004
The survival of four people who were trapped for 11 days in the rubble of a building demolished by storms in the northern Philippines is amazing but not unprecedented, doctors said on Thursday. An emergency specialist with an international agency said: ”To survive for 11 days in those conditions is amazing but not impossible.”