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/ 19 October 2004
After 34 years of patient tinkering, researchers at Peru’s most prestigious agrarian university have bred a new culinary export they hope will scamper on to dinner plates throughout the United States and the world: the super-size guinea pig. Peruvians consume an estimated 65-million guinea pigs each year.
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/ 19 October 2004
Blood tests have revealed that environment ministers from 13 European Union countries are contaminated with chemical pollutants from sofas, pizza boxes and pesticides, the environmental group WWF said Tuesday. All the ministers bore traces of 22 poly-chlorinated biphenyls, a category of toxic chemicals banned in Europe during the 1970s and among the ”dirty dozen” being phased out internationally.
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/ 19 October 2004
France and Spain called for a rethink on Monday on radical German-Italian plans to set up a European Union transit camp in North Africa for refugees from Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Their objections came at the end of a two-day summit in Florence held by interior ministers from the big five EU countries.
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/ 19 October 2004
Items from Pharmacy, the restaurant set up by British artist Damien Hirst, fetched £11,1-million (about R126,7-million) at an auction in London, Sotheby’s said on Tuesday. Pharmacy became London’s most fashionable spot at the height of Cool Britannia, Britpop and New Labour’s rise to government.
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/ 19 October 2004
British pop star Elton John held back on Tuesday from apologising for his recent foul-mouthed attack on Madonna, whom he accused of miming during live performances, saying she is an ”artist of the video age”. ”I do regret hurting her feelings because she’s a major artist,” John told Television New Zealand.
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/ 19 October 2004
Reuters, the British news and financial information provider, on Tuesday reported a 4,4% drop in core subscription revenue to 528-million pounds ( million) during the third quarter from the same period of last year. Reuters had itself forecast subscription income, or underlying core recurring revenue, to fall by 5% during the third quarter.
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/ 19 October 2004
The JSE Securities Exchange (JSE) was in positive territory in noon trade on Tuesday although a strengthening rand threatened to pare the bourse’s gains. Dealers said that the market was difficult to call and that there were no clear trends. At noon, the rand was quoted at R6,35 per dollar from R6,37 when the JSE closed on Monday.
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/ 19 October 2004
Donors are belatedly coughing up cash to fight locusts in West Africa, but agricultural experts warned on Monday that it will take two or three years to reduce the number of insects to the point where they no longer present a significant threat to agriculture. Nearly half the crop-spraying aircraft in West Africa have been sent to Senegal.
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/ 19 October 2004
The media were called to order for ”sensationalist” reporting as the Schabir Shaik trial entered its second week on Monday. At the start of proceedings, prosecutor Billy Downer told Judge Hillary Squires that the weekend’s Sunday Tribune had carried details from a report on Shaik’s company books that the prosecution commissioned from auditors KPMG.
The assistant who ‘knew too much’
Shaik’s assistant spills the beans
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/ 19 October 2004
Listed retailer Pick ‘n Pay has managed the current South African environment of very low inflation and deflation in some categories by improving its operational efficiencies as well as encouraging higher sales volumes, reflected in an improvement in its operating profit margin to 2,6% from 2,4% a year earlier.