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/ 7 December 2004
Even when he’s asleep, Scott Kearnan is hooked into the internet. He just turns down the volume on his computer, so he’s not awakened by the ”brrring” of a late-night instant message. ”It’s become something for me that’s almost like a telephone. I may not use it, but it could ring anytime,” says the 22-year-old, who works for a search-engine marketing company. ”If I don’t have it, I feel cut off.”
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/ 7 December 2004
Although denting the reputation of South African wine producers over the short-term, the uncovering of KWV’s use of additives in two of its Sauvignon Blanc wines can have a positive long-term impact on the local wine industry’s image overseas, according to Paul Pontallier, managing director of Château Margaux, the world-famous Bordeaux wine estate.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=BreakingNews-National&ao=176088">KWV names, shames winemakers</a>
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/ 7 December 2004
Stunned residents picked their way through a wasteland of mud and rubble to leave storm-ravaged areas of the Philippines on Tuesday as the government said it has run out of money to pay for relief services. The damage bill is expected to run into billions of pesos in a country already strapped for cash.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=BreakingNews-InternationalNews&ao=176103">1 400 dead or missing</a>
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/ 7 December 2004
Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki on Tuesday rejected an Ethiopian peace proposal made in late November, in what was his first declaration on the issue, an official statement said. The Ethiopian proposal ”contains no new developments” and it would ”drag the peace process another step backwards,” he insisted in a statement published by the Eritrean information ministry.
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/ 7 December 2004
It was a romance that really had legs: young Aurora, a female giant octopus, and her aging cephalopod suitor J-1 were thrown together for a blind date seven months ago by aquarists who hoped the two would mate. By all appearances, their fling was a success, but the resulting eggs seemed sterile — until the aquarists started draining Aurora’s tank.
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/ 7 December 2004
The crucial Gold Fields shareholder vote on whether to merge Gold Fields’ international mining assets and those of Canada’s Iamgold is set to take place on Tuesday, with the result hanging in the balance. Gold Fields holds an extraordinary general meeting on the Iamgold transaction from 9am on Tuesday.
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/ 7 December 2004
Shareholders in Cashbuild have approved proposals that will pave the way for the building material retailer to sell a 10% stake in the company to its employee base of approximately 2 000 people across South Africa, of whom more than 90% qualify as historically disadvantaged South Africans.
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/ 7 December 2004
The Cape High Court on Monday viewed gruesome video footage of the badly decomposed body of Dutch exchange student Marleen Konings. The footage was too traumatic for Konings’s family, who left the courtroom during the viewing and returned later.
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/ 7 December 2004
Details about President Thabo Mbeki’s blood donations should not have been made public, the Minister of Health said on Monday. Manto Tshabalala-Msimang was concerned that the South African National Blood Service ”had failed to observe the principle of confidentiality in the handling of medical records”.
‘Please don’t stop donating blood’
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/ 7 December 2004
The Italians talk so much and so animatedly that visitors often wonder what on earth they can be discussing. Now a research firm has come up with the answer: each other. Urban Italians, it claims, spend an average of five hours a day gossiping. A survey found the most popular victims were work colleagues and that the place where most tittle-tattle was exchanged was the workplace.