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/ 22 September 2004
Belching and farting sheep and cattle, blamed by doomsters for driving the planet towards climate catastrophe, may have met their match. Eructations from farm animals account for a fifth of all global emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas that is less plentiful but far more potent than the most notorious culprit, carbon dioxide.
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/ 22 September 2004
Japan’s pioneer gay magazine Barazoku (Rose Tribe) is to close down after helping homosexual males come out of the closet over three decades, its editor said on Wednesday. ”With the spread of internet sites, they don’t need printed magazines like ours any longer,” said Bungaku Ito, who launched the country’s first magazine for gay men in 1971 when homosexuality was a taboo subject.
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/ 22 September 2004
Global defence company BAE Systems has awarded Denel, the South African arms manufacturer, an export contract worth about R14-million to supply artillery electronics, the two firms said on Wednesday. Under the contract, Denel would supply ”layers display and control units” for incorporation onto a BAE Systems new light field artillery gun being marketed worldwide.
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/ 22 September 2004
Rats fitted with radio backpacks may soon help rescue teams locate earthquake survivors who are buried under rubble, the British weekly New Scientist reports in next Saturday’s issue. Researchers at the University of Florida in Gainesville and the State University of New York in Brooklyn have fitted rats with electrode implants in their brains, hooked up to a tiny radio transmitter that transmits a signal of their cerebral activity.
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/ 22 September 2004
A spectacular exhibition of contemporary art, which opened in Berlin on Tuesday amid Jewish protests, drew accusations that its billionaire owner was exploiting art to redeem his family’s Nazi past. Jewish protesters say the vast collection is founded on ”blood money”.
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/ 22 September 2004
The United States government opened a -billion civil trial against the giants of the tobacco industry on Tuesday, arguing that the firms conspired for decades to hide the dangers of smoking, and illegally marketed cigarettes to children. The landmark case, five years in the making, could also lead to tighter tobacco legislation, including a ban on such descriptions as ”low tar” and ”light” cigarettes.
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/ 22 September 2004
A poll in 20 swing states published on Tuesday showed John Kerry still clinging to a narrow lead over President George Bush in the key election battlegrounds, but it raised questions about the reliability of such polls at a volatile point in the campaign.
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/ 22 September 2004
In Lagos, expect chaos. There are gun battles in Bogotá. Crime has been a curse in Karachi. But there is nowhere on earth quite like this. According to a survey by the Economist Intelligence Unit, the capital of Papua New Guinea has beaten all-comers — again — to take a title that no city on earth would covet.
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/ 22 September 2004
In the deep south of Mauritania, swarms of locusts appear on the horizon like dark menacing sand storms and then arrive to swirl around the countryside like blizzards of thick, yellow snowflakes. The grasshopper-like insects settle on every tree, plant and bush and begin to munch away at the green vegetation.
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/ 22 September 2004
A senior Eastern Cape government official and an accomplice were arrested on Wednesday morning for alleged fraud and corruption involving R1,2-million. The National Prosecuting Authority said the official allegedly received a R50 000 bribe for fraudulently advancing payment of R1,2-million to the accomplice’s company.