Staff Reporter
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/ 24 February 2006

Enron CEO ‘didn’t want to be corrected’

A former Enron vice-president of investor relations testified that in the months before the company failed in late 2001, she witnessed behavior by top company executives that concerned her but did not think crimes were being committed. ”I observed events that I thought were wrong, so I did make a conclusion. I didn’t make a conclusion that it was legal or illegal,” Paula Rieker said under cross-examination.

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/ 24 February 2006

Matsushita’s new president to continue DVD battle

Matsushita Electric Industrial’s newly appointed president on Friday expressed confidence that the company and its partners would win the battle for dominance in next-generation DVD players. Fumio Otsubo, named on Thursday as head of the Japanese electronics giant behind the Panasonic brand, said he would uphold his predecessor’s policy of promoting the Blu-ray standard.

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/ 24 February 2006

SA gran guilty of smuggling cocaine in gnomes

A South African grandmother caught carrying more than 3kg of cocaine hidden inside garden gnomes was found guilty of drug smuggling on Friday after a week-long trial in the Auckland High Court. Linda Martin (52) had denied the charge, claiming she had been framed by a Nigerian drug ring that put the four drug-filled gnomes into a suitcase she was carrying.

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/ 24 February 2006

Sectarian violence explodes in Iraq

Iraqi authorities struggled to contain a convulsion of sectarian violence on Thursday in which more than 150 people died in massacres, armed clashes, suicide bombs and reprisal attacks on Sunni mosques. Sunni religious authorities said 128 Sunni mosques had been attacked and three clerics killed.