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/ 13 October 2004
Improved security for banks and cash-in-transit vehicles has seen robbers turn to the retail industry, which has suffered a R12-million loss so far this year, Kobus Kuyler, general manager of safety and security at Pick ‘n Pay, said on Wednesday. This is up from the total loss for 2003 of R9-million.
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/ 13 October 2004
The blind cavefish, a curiosity of nature, has a clever genetic trick that destroys its sight, thus giving itself an advantage in a pitch-dark watery world, scientists believe. Astyanax mexicanus lives in deep, lightless caves off the Mexican coast. Soon after the cavefish starts developing in the egg, its eyes begin to degenerate and the fish is born blind.
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/ 13 October 2004
President Thabo Mbeki has wrapped up his two-day state visit to Tunisia, and will proceed to Hungary to attend a governance summit, Department of Foreign Affairs officials said on Wednesday. Mbeki — who was accompanied to Tunisia by his wife, Zanele; several Cabinet ministers; and business leaders — arrived in Tunisia on Tuesday.
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/ 13 October 2004
Prime Minister Tony Blair on Wednesday vigorously denied misrepresenting pre-war intelligence on Iraqi weapons and rejected growing demands for an apology from opponents in Parliament who accuse him of misleading the country. Blair again insisted he had been right to back the United States-led invasion.
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/ 13 October 2004
Dozens of men lined up for the third day on Wednesday to hand over their weapons at police stations in the Iraqi capital’s Sadr City slum in line with an initiative by radical Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi hailed the programme as the first step to restoring security and stability to Sadr City.
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/ 13 October 2004
About 1% of adults have absolutely no interest in sex, a surprisingly high figure that is not far from the estimated 3% of the population who are gay, according to a study reported in next Saturday’s <i>New Scientist</i>. Plucky activists have already started campaigning to promote awareness and acceptance of asexuality.
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/ 13 October 2004
The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) believes it has already obtained permission for former public accounts committee chairperson Gavin Woods to testify at Schabir Shaik’s fraud and corruption trial. This follows a warning by National Assembly Speaker Baleka Mbete that two MPs due to give evidence will need Parliament’s permission.
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/ 13 October 2004
The United States attorney’s office has opened an investigation into last week’s closure of a Liverpool factory that led to a drastic shortage in flu vaccines in the US and Britain. British authorities suspended the plant’s licence for three months following the announcement in August that a batch of flu vaccines had been contaminated.
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/ 13 October 2004
Any person in Iraq runs a very high risk of being killed, said the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) in Pretoria on Wednesday. Responding to the death of two more South Africans who were gunned down on Tuesday in a roadside attack on their convoy, ISS analyst Henri Boshoff said more deaths should be expected.
Two more South Africans killed in Iraq
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/ 13 October 2004
He is Germany’s most famous literary son, whose upright posture deep into old age impressed many of his contemporaries. But on Tuesday it emerged that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe — the biggest name in the German cultural pantheon and the German-speaking world’s answer to Shakespeare — suffered for more than 40 years from acute backache.