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Thursday, 12 June 2014 - 08:51

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Turtle picks Spain over Oranje; Animal party angered

A turtle named Luis, of the Dutch embassy in Brasilia, Brazil, has chosen Spain to win the first World Cup match against The Netherlands on Friday the 13th. The Dutch Animal party, PvdD, is outraged and demands the immediate release of the animal. The supposedly clairvoyant turtle predicts Oranje's World Cup lot for the country's diplomats in Brazil. For PvdD fraction president Marianne Thieme, it is "bizarre" that an embassy keeps a turtle as pet. "If the Dutch national team does its best, then we don't need animals to predict results", Thieme says. According to a spokesperson for the embassy, the turtle is having a good life in the embassy gardens, where the reptile has plenty of room. The garden is the size of five football fields. "He has been poking around there for a year, after a co-worker bought him from an acquaintance. If he hadn't done that, then the acquaintance would have made soup out of him", the spokesperson says. Brazil is also using a turtle to replace the previous World Cup oracle, Paul the octopus. Brazil's turtle is called 'Cabecao', meaning big head, which will predict the result of every match. For today's first World Cup match between host country Brazil and Croatia, the 25-year old reptile predicts Brazil to win.

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