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/ 14 January 2005

Remarkable comeback for England

England captain Michael Vaughan led a remarkable comeback after tea on the second day of the fourth Castle Lager/MTN cricket Test against South Africa on Friday. At close of play, England had 411 for the loss of eight wickets, and appeared to have taken total control of the match again.

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/ 14 January 2005

Crime down to a fine art

Thieves have relieved the Johannesburg Art Gallery of a valuable 19th-century Dutch pre-Impressionist painting — the fourth heist at the institution in the past eight years. Johann Barthold Jongkind’s A Normandy Beach was painted in 1863 and donated to the gallery by mining magnate Otto Beit.

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/ 14 January 2005

Swaziland seeks border adjustment

South Africa’s agreement to take seriously Swaziland’s claim to its national territory has implications for all of Africa, and the pledges African countries have made to honour boundaries drawn up during the colonial era, diplomats have said. Because of colonial-era territorial gerrymandering, more Swazis live outside Swaziland than in the small country left behind within diminished borders.

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/ 14 January 2005

Massive Cape fire under control, for now

A gale-force south-easter, blowing at more than 50kph on Friday and predicted to continue over the weekend, threatened to cause flare-ups on the fire-ravaged Table Mountain area above Muizenberg on Friday. Since Thursday, an area from Boyes Drive to Steenberg, Swanswyk and further had been affected by the runaway fire.

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/ 14 January 2005

And now for Gadaffi: The Opera

Having led his country back into the international mainstream after renouncing ambitions to build weapons of mass destruction, Libyan leader Moammar Gadaffi is now being immortalised by a leading British opera company, it said on Thursday. The as-yet-unnamed work was commissioned by the English National Opera.

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/ 14 January 2005

Bar owner wants to sell holy oyster

After the revelation of a grilled-cheese sandwich allegedly bearing an image of the Virgin Mary in Florida last year, a bar manager in Switzerland said on Thursday he is ready to sell a Christ-like oyster shell. Matteo Brandi, who runs a bar in the western Swiss village of Roche, came across the shell while he was opening a batch of oysters.

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/ 14 January 2005

Wal-Mart launches charm offensive

Wal-Mart chief executive Lee Scott led a media charge to counter criticism that the world’s largest retailer is a behemoth that takes advantage of its workers and stifles competition. Scott said on Thursday he wants Wal-Mart workers to know the company was speaking up for them, and he wants Wal-Mart to have a better handle on how it is perceived by the public.

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/ 14 January 2005

DA calls for audit into matric exams

The Democratic Alliance on Thursday called for an independent forensic audit into the Mpumalanga matric examinations. The party’s education spokesperson Helen Zille said it was clear that the existing statutory oversight mechanisms were not able to satisfy the public that the examinations were not conducted with integrity.

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/ 14 January 2005

Former AOL chief pleads guilty to fraud charges

America Online’s former chief of human resources pleaded guilty to fraud on Thursday for profiting from a sham consulting contract, and court documents allege he ran similar schemes at two other companies. Prosecutors estimated that Gregory Horton (38) defrauded AOL of  000, AutoNation of ,8-million and Qwest Communications of  000.