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/ 14 January 2005
After the revelation of a grilled-cheese sandwich allegedly bearing an image of the Virgin Mary in Florida last year, a bar manager in Switzerland said on Thursday he is ready to sell a Christ-like oyster shell. Matteo Brandi, who runs a bar in the western Swiss village of Roche, came across the shell while he was opening a batch of oysters.
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/ 14 January 2005
Wal-Mart chief executive Lee Scott led a media charge to counter criticism that the world’s largest retailer is a behemoth that takes advantage of its workers and stifles competition. Scott said on Thursday he wants Wal-Mart workers to know the company was speaking up for them, and he wants Wal-Mart to have a better handle on how it is perceived by the public.
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/ 14 January 2005
The Democratic Alliance on Thursday called for an independent forensic audit into the Mpumalanga matric examinations. The party’s education spokesperson Helen Zille said it was clear that the existing statutory oversight mechanisms were not able to satisfy the public that the examinations were not conducted with integrity.
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/ 14 January 2005
America Online’s former chief of human resources pleaded guilty to fraud on Thursday for profiting from a sham consulting contract, and court documents allege he ran similar schemes at two other companies. Prosecutors estimated that Gregory Horton (38) defrauded AOL of  000, AutoNation of ,8-million and Qwest Communications of  000.
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/ 14 January 2005
Strawberry Fields, the English orphanage immortalised in the famous Beatles song <i>Strawberry Fields Forever</i>, is to close soon. The facility in the Woolton district of Liverpool in north-west England, where John Lennon played as a child in the wooded park, has been ordered to close, the Salvation Army said on Wednesday.
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/ 14 January 2005
All border-crossing passages between Israel and the Gaza Strip will remain closed until further notice, the Israeli defence ministry said Friday, hours after six Israeli civilians were killed in a militant attack at one such crossing. Karni, in the Gaza Strip, was closed immediately after an overnight attack perpetrated by three Palestinian gunmen.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=BreakingNews-InternationalNews&ao=177898">Deadly Gaza bombing</a>
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/ 14 January 2005
Usually with one hand on the horn and another gesturing out of the window, Romans lament their city’s gridlocked, polluting traffic. But on Thursday they received confirmation from a higher authority that it really is as bad as they imagined: even the Pope despairs of it. ”What can one say of the city traffic?” he sighed at an audience on Thursday.
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/ 14 January 2005
The African Union wants African countries to send troops to the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo to forcefully disarm rebel factions believed to be responsible for the 1994 genocide in neighbouring Rwanda. Spokesperson Desmond Orjiako said he would ask African nations to contribute soldiers to disarm an estimated 10Â 000 former Rwandan soldiers and Hutu Interahamwe militia.
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/ 14 January 2005
South African fixed-line monopoly Telkom and the Department of Communications portfolio organisation noted on Friday that Minister of Communications Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri’s liberalisation determination on public payphones was a deviation from the Telecommunications Act.
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/ 14 January 2005
Banking group Absa was the most-reported-on company in leading South African media in 2004, according to research conducted by Media Tenor South Africa. Absa was followed by telecommunications group Telkom and gold miner Harmony. For the first time in five years, black CEOs topped the list of most-quoted managers in the media.