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/ 24 January 2006

Sri Lanka asks Norway to arrange early talks

Sri Lanka’s president on Tuesday asked Norway to arrange early talks with Tamil Tiger rebels and help stem the latest wave of violence that has killed at least 151 people. President Mahinda Rajapakse held closed-door talks with Norway’s top peace envoy, Erik Solheim, on salvaging the island’s Oslo-backed peace process, which has remained deadlocked since April 2003.

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/ 24 January 2006

Oilgate: DA loses patience with NPA

The spat between the Democratic Alliance (DA) and the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) over the Oilgate scandal grew on Tuesday with the DA accusing the NPA of ”failing to do its mandated duty”. On Monday, NPA spokesperson Makhosini Nkosi said the NPA had yet to receive a complaint by the DA about its handling of the scandal.

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/ 24 January 2006

BlackBerry users worry after US court rejects appeal

Millions of United States BlackBerry users can now turn their attention back to a federal court where the fate of the popular wireless e-mail device may be decided.
After the Supreme Court chose on Monday not to intervene in the case, the resolution of the long-running battle over patents for the handheld device is up to a district judge.

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/ 24 January 2006

More deaths reported in extreme European cold

Bone-chilling weather claimed dozens of lives on Monday across Europe as glacial temperatures swept the Baltics to the Balkans, brought rare snowfalls to Istanbul and sparked a scramble for heating fuel. The unusually low temperatures have left well more than 100 fatalities in Germany, Poland, Russia, Turkey and the Czech Republic.

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/ 24 January 2006

MultiChoice ‘would welcome competition’

MultiChoice said on Tuesday it would welcome competition after the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) announced that it would be inviting applications for a subscription broadcast licence at the end of the month. MultiChoice said it supports and adheres to the process set down by Icasa.

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/ 24 January 2006

Congo named as new AU chair

African leaders on Tuesday named Congo as the chair of the African Union and agreed that Sudan would take over the leadership of the 53-nation body in 2007, according to a text issued at a summit in Khartoum. Sudan on Monday offered to withdraw its bid to head the AU to avoid a split among leaders of the 53-nation body.

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/ 24 January 2006

Illegal Myanmar timber trade with China picks up

Myanmar’s illegal timber trade with China has picked up in recent days, after an unexplained halt of several months, a forestry watchdog said on Tuesday. Global Witness said logging trucks had been crossing to China’s southwestern Yunnan province from northern Myanmar every seven minutes when the London-based group released its previous report in October.

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/ 24 January 2006

Union says Ford workers face retrenchment

Ford Motor Company has announced further massive retrenchments plans of thousands of workers, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa said on Tuesday. The trade union attributed the potential retrenchments to the relocation of Volvo and Land Rover production operations in Pretoria’s Ford assembly plant to Europe.