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/ 26 October 2005
Chinese tourist chiefs and luxury hotel managers are reinterpreting the old communist dictum, Serve the People, with help from an unusual source: an English butler. When Robert Watson entered service in 1974, China was in the midst of the cultural revolution. If he had ventured to Beijing at that time, his profession would have condemned him as a class traitor.
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/ 26 October 2005
The White House wants the CIA to be exempted from a proposed ban on the abusive treatment of terrorism suspects being held in United States custody. The Senate defied a threatened presidential veto three weeks ago and passed legislation that would outlaw the ”cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” of anyone held by the US.
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/ 26 October 2005
A South African student who attacked his sleeping roommate with a baseball bat told a judge on Wednesday that he was surprised to learn he was acting illegally in New Zealand. Artur Kalauov (19) was sentenced to six months in jail after pleading guilty to a charge of assault with intent to injure his roommate at an aviation college near the South Island town of Nelson.
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/ 26 October 2005
Indian quake survivor Altaf Hussein’s patience has worn thin. Every day for the past 10 days he has queued for kerosene from government trucks, and every day he has gone back empty-handed. As winter closes in, villagers like Hussein say little or no relief has reached this devastated mountain region — which accounted for more than half of the 1Â 300 deaths from an October 8 earthquake in Indian Kashmir.
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/ 26 October 2005
October was the lucky month for Saul Ramatsetse, a teacher at Balegeng Primary School in Mamelodi East outside of Pretoria. His phone number was chosen in a random draw from over 360 entries for the prize of R10 000-worth of books, courtesy of Oxford University Press.
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/ 26 October 2005
As I’m a happy geek — and you are too, otherwise you wouldn’t have even managed to find your way to this column, right? — I thought we should wade through some of the geek-related goodies and news items that just keep pouring in. For starters, the world’s smallest car has been created in a laboratory — measuring about three to four nanometres across.
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/ 26 October 2005
Aprilia has launched their all-new Pegaso Strada in South Africa, using the latest Minarelli-built Yamaha 660cc engine instead of the Rotax unit used in the dual-purpose Pegaso. Aprilia altered the cylinder head, intake and exhaust systems and fuel injection mapping to milk an extra three bhp from the four-valve engine, and slotted it into a single-spar steel frame.
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/ 26 October 2005
Researchers in the United States and Uganda are exploring the implications of allowing HIV-positive patients to take a break from their medications every weekend, a strategy that could reduce the cost of treating the disease and improve the quality of life for patients.
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/ 26 October 2005
By resisting to give-up her seat on the bus, Rosa Parks gave voice to a spirit of resistance in a place and at a time when the world preferred black women to remain silent. Her throat was so dry after her arrest that she longed for a drink of water. It would remain parched for some time because the water fountain at the city jail was for whites only.
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/ 26 October 2005
There is always bad news for women, but rarely so bad as in the past few weeks. If you ever dreamed that in the modern world you could avail yourself of freedoms unknown to women in previous generations, the warnings are now being posted on every door. You meddle with nature at your peril, girl.