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/ 19 January 2007

Open organisers defend silence over sexual assault

Australian Open organisers on Friday defended keeping quiet about the sexual assault of a five-year-old boy in a toilet this week, saying they did so at the request of police. The young boy was sexually assaulted at the Rod Laver Arena on Monday. Police said they were examining hours of security video footage taken at the tournament’s opening day.

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/ 19 January 2007

Striking Zim doctors reject govt pay offer

Doctors at Zimbabwe’s state hospitals have rejected a government offer to hike their salaries and vowed to press on with a crippling strike, an official said on Friday. ”As the situation stands now, we are still on strike,” Kudakwashe Nyamutukwa, president of the Hospital Doctors’ Association, said.

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/ 19 January 2007

Belgian editors go after Yahoo!

After taking action against Microsoft and Google, Belgium’s French-speaking newspapers are seeking redress from another internet search engine, Yahoo!, their lawyer said on Thursday. The papers accuse Yahoo! of violating copyright laws by giving internet users free access to archived newspaper articles.

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/ 19 January 2007

MySpace sued over sex traps for teens

MySpace defended itself on Thursday against new lawsuits charging it had failed to protect five girls from being lured into sex traps by predators on the popular teen social website. The suits demand unspecified millions of dollars in damages from MySpace for "negligence, recklessness, fraud" and misrepresentation.

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/ 19 January 2007

New Vista to be delivered online

Microsoft will make its new Vista operating system available for download via the internet when it debuts at the end of this month, a marketing first for the United States software colossus. Microsoft has sold its world-dominating software only on packaged disks since the Redmond, Washington, company opened for business in 1975.

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/ 19 January 2007

Foreign selling weighs on bonds

South African bonds ended the week marginally weaker than last week, with the yield on the R153 rising by four basis points to 8,22% and the yield on the R157 rising by one basis point to 7,83%, with concerns around interest rate increases and selling by foreigners weighing on the market.

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/ 19 January 2007

JSE takes knock as commodities slip

The JSE reversed Thursday’s gains on Friday morning following a pullback in commodity prices. Softer world markets also weighed. By 11.57am, the all-share index slipped 1,02%. Resources retreated 1,04%, with the gold- and platinum-mining indices losing 1,53% and 1,35% respectively. Industrials weakened 0,92%, financials fell 1,22% and the banks index was 1,47% in the red.

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/ 19 January 2007

Israel transfers $100m to Palestinians

Israel transferred -million in frozen funds to the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority on Friday in an effort to bolster moderate president Mahmoud Abbas, locked in a battle for power with the governing Hamas. Israel has withheld hundreds of millions of dollars collected on behalf of the Palestinians since the Hamas took over the government in March last year.