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/ 8 March 2002

Hoax calls clog emergency lines

David Shapshak South Africa’s all-important emergency lines are being flooded with hoax phone calls. The public’s first access to emergency services is through call centres, but many of these are clogged with a deluge of nuisance calls, largely from children who use public telephones and are therefore untraceable. Of the 2000 calls that Cape Town’s […]

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/ 8 March 2002

Highlights of the science festival

Fringe Events: The South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity Something Fishy When: March 13, Time: 11h30 to 12h30 Nadine Strydom: Baby fish, so what! This talk will take you through the developmental stages of larval fishes, exploring their growth cycle, how they look and what they eat.

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/ 8 March 2002

Grappling with grappa

Lynda Gilfillan Mention Meerlust, and something of a South African myth is conjured up. So much so, that in JM Coetzee’s award-winning novel, Disgrace, a bottle of Meerlust wine is mentioned as part of a crucial seduction scene. Marry Meerlust with grappa, and, well, who knows what might happen! Hannes Myburgh, 8th generation proprietor of […]

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/ 8 March 2002

Goals and glory on TV

Riaan Wolmarans ‘Anybody who watches three games of football in a row should be declared brain-dead,”said author and satirist Erma Bombeck of gridiron soccer in the United States. If this were true the mortality rate in South Africa would rise drastically when the 2002 soccer World Cup, to be held in Korea and Japan, hits […]

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/ 8 March 2002

Foggy still in the driver’s seat

World superbike’s biggest star tells Jim White that his new team will make its debut in June and prove the sceptics wrong Carl Fogarty’s house would be a pushover if featured on Through The Keyhole. Sitting on top of a Lancastrian hill, with astonishing views across the plains to Blackpool Tower, it is what greets […]

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/ 8 March 2002

Focus on genetic bottlenecks

Kevin Scott In survival terms, the elephants of the Greater Addo Elephant National Park are booming. The Addo elephants have increased their population thirtyfold in just 71 years. But increasing a population so drastically has its dangers not only to the ecology of the park but also to the biology of the animals. Today inbreeding […]

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/ 8 March 2002

First people left out in the cold

Glenda Daniels and David Macfarlane With just six months before Johannesburg hosts the World Summit on Sustainable Development, the civil society process is in tatters and its leadership a source of confusion. A new forum to lead South African civil society’s input at the summit has been set up by the Congress of South African […]

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/ 8 March 2002

Fighting for the right to sell sex

Nawaal Deane Whether or not prostitutes can ply their trade freely or be thrown in jail for selling sex was a debate that packed out the courtroom at the Constitutional Court this week. The main arguments focused on the rights of sex workers to do their job against the moral consequences legalising the profession could […]

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/ 8 March 2002

Counting the cranes

Efforts are under way to free South Africa’s national bird from the threat of extinction Sheree Russouw With the smooth elegance of a ballerina the blue crane pirouettes, leaping on top of the ground. His long neck seems to reach straight up to heaven as he delicately folds his body into seductive curves. Then, as […]