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/ 21 February 2005
Australia’s Adam Scott completed a second-round 66 on Sunday to join American Chad Campbell atop the leaderboard at the PGA Tour’s rain-ravaged Los Angeles stop, and could only hope the weather gave him a chance to mount a further challenge. Scott finally made it into the clubhouse at nine-under 133.
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/ 21 February 2005
Flag-waving supporters of New York’s bid to host the 2012 Summer Olympic Games greeted delegates of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) on Sunday night, the start of a fast-paced four-day visit. New York is the third stop for members of the IOC after Madrid and London. They will also visit Moscow and Paris.
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/ 21 February 2005
A -million sales pitch aimed at luring the 2012 Olympics to New York began on Sunday when the International Olympic Committee’s evaluation commission arrived in the well-polished Big Apple. The 13-member panel has already visited rival finalists London and Madrid and will journey to Paris and Moscow next month.
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/ 18 February 2005
Microsoft said on Thursday it was recalling about 14-million power cords for the software giant’s Xbox gaming consoles due to a potential fire risk. ”This is a preventative step we’re choosing to take despite the rarity of these incidents,” said Robbie Bach, senior Vice-President of the Home and Entertainment Division.
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/ 16 February 2005
Global sales of personal computers are expected to grow nine percent in 2005, a cooler rate than the 11,6% growth pace of 2004, a market research firm said on Tuesday. Gartner projected worldwide PC shipments of 199-million units in 2005, from 183-million units in 2004.
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/ 16 February 2005
Microsoft will offer consumers who use its Windows operating system free software to battle spyware and eventually antivirus software, chairperson Bill Gates said on Tuesday. Gates said that Microsoft is on track to deliver an antivirus product to consumers by the end of the year, following its acquisition of
Sybari Software.
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/ 16 February 2005
Tiger Woods could reclaim the world number one golf ranking from Fiji’s Vijay singh in Los Angeles this week by finishing in the top four at the PGA Nissan Open. Woods spent a record 334 weeks atop the rankings, including 264 in a row, before being dethroned last September by Singh’s victory at Boston.
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/ 16 February 2005
A new strain of HIV — resistant to three of the four classes of antiretroviral drugs available — has been identified in New York, say officials.
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/ 9 February 2005
Underdog online search engine Ask Jeeves has bought Bloglines, a web log index and internet news funnel popular with serious readers of online journals, in its latest bid to gain ground on heavyweight rivals Google and Yahoo. Ask Jeeves’ stock opened up 22 cents at ,65 a share on the Nasdaq stock market on Tuesday.
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/ 8 February 2005
A four-year-old boy borrowed his mother’s car overnight to go rent a video game, police in Sandlake, Michigan, said on Monday. At about 1.30am local time on Friday, a patrol officer reported seeing a car with its lights off moving at a snail’s pace, zigzagging between two lanes on a highway, said police chief Doug Heugel.
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/ 7 February 2005
A ,5-trillion 2006 Budget plan proposed on Monday by United States President George Bush will cut many domestic programmes while boosting defence, with a projected deficit of -billion. The proposal, certain to ignite a battle from opposition Democrats, will raise military expenditures by 4,8% to ,3-billion.
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/ 7 February 2005
A local conflict over control of relatively small amounts of oil in Nigeria can have immediate global consequences. Human Rights Watch has released a 22-page report on the conflict between rival gangs in the Nigerian Delta, which underlines the importance of addressing the root causes of the violence that has taken dozens of innocent lives.
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/ 5 February 2005
Newly discovered tapes have revealed how the energy corporation Enron shut down at least one power plant on false pretences, deliberately aggravating California’s crippling 2001 blackouts with the aim of raising prices. The tapes also show that Enron manipulated energy markets in Canada.
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/ 5 February 2005
United States President George Bush’s new Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, insisted on Friday that the US has no plans to attack Iran ”at this point”. Rice was speaking after Downing Street talks with British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw at the beginning of a week-long tour of Europe and the Middle East.
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/ 5 February 2005
A New York state court ruled on Friday that same-sex couples should be allowed to marry, a decision hailed by gay-rights groups as a major victory. Justice Doris Ling-Cohan said preventing gay and lesbian couples from receiving marriage licenses violates basic freedoms guaranteed in the state Constitution.
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/ 3 February 2005
Amazon.com said on Wednesday that earnings for its all-important fourth quarter rose more than fourfold, but the internet retailing giant was helped by a big one-time tax benefit and missed Wall Street expectations. The results sent Amazon shares plunging 13%, or ,44.
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/ 3 February 2005
A unique deal in which 10 former WorldCom directors would personally pay -million of a -million settlement to compensate investors over the company’s plunge into bankruptcy will be withdrawn, plaintiffs said. The plaintiffs were pulling out of the deal after United States District Judge Denise Cote on Wednesday struck down a key component of the agreement.
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/ 2 February 2005
Google’s fourth-quarter profit surged to a sevenfold increase, accelerating the financial gains that have quickly turned the online search engine leader into a Wall Street favourite. The Mountain View-based company said on Tuesday that it earned ,1-million or 71 cents per share, during the final three months of 2004.
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/ 1 February 2005
Microsoft on Tuesday launched its own internet search engine ”built from the ground up”, entering a new market dominated by rivals Google and Yahoo. Microsoft said the search engine, which was unveiled in a test version last November, is now available in 25 markets and 10 languages.
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/ 1 February 2005
The purchase of AT&T by SBC Communications saves AT&T from a nosedive into irrelevance in the industry it created more than a century ago. It also gives SBC the name and the network to fulfill its goal of being viewed as a truly national player rather than just a local telephone company.
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/ 31 January 2005
Two United States children’s animated characters, Buster the rabbit and SpongeBob SquarePants, have whipped up a storm, with conservative Christians and the new US education secretary scrutinising pro-gay associations in viewing for young children. ”Many parents would not want their young children exposed to [these] lifestyles,” Spellings said.
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/ 31 January 2005
While basking in the apparent success of Iraq’s national elections, the United States still faces some tough hurdles in fashioning an exit strategy from the country it invaded nearly two years ago. US President George Bush has made it clear Iraq has a long and bloody road ahead of it.
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/ 28 January 2005
Procter & Gamble is buying razor and battery maker Gillette for about -billion in a stock deal that would create the world’s largest stable of consumer products, the companies announced on Friday. The companies said they expect to save billion to -billion in annual costs, and cut about 6Â 000 jobs as part of the integration.
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/ 27 January 2005
A Florida man paid $17Â 000 (R100Â 000) for a full-page newspaper ad imploring his wife to return, two weeks after she had left him. "Life without you is empty and meaningless. Please, please call me," Larry urged Marianne in the <i>Florida Times-Union</i> ad, which uses only the couple’s first names.
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/ 27 January 2005
A Florida judge issued his own version of a gag order when he had officers duct-tape the mouth of an angry murderer who had been hurling abuse at him, the <i>Saint Petersburg Times</i> reported on Wednesday. It took six prison officers clad in body armour and helmets to place the duct tape on the mouth of the defendant.
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/ 25 January 2005
Current and former African American employees of Boeing have been granted class-action status in their lawsuit accusing the defence giant of discrimination and harassing black workers. The law firm Hagens Berman said the plaintiffs are seeking injunctive relief, back pay and punitive damages.
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/ 24 January 2005
The north-eastern United States was emerging on Monday from a snowstorm, ranked among the five worst in the past century, that was linked to at least 18 deaths across eight states. The storm, which started on Friday, dumped 35cm in New York City and close to a metre in some parts of the state of Massachusetts.
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/ 20 January 2005
George Bush swore the United States presidential oath for a second term in turbulent times on Thursday and issued a sweeping pledge to spread liberty and freedom ”to the darkest corners of the world”.
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/ 20 January 2005
With a pledge to battle terrorism and promote democracy around the world, United States President George Bush was to launch his new term on Thursday under an unprecedented security blanket and a dusting of snow. An army of police and Secret Service agents patrolled the streets around the White House.
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/ 18 January 2005
A new biography of Abraham Lincoln is making headlines with its assertion that the romantic leanings of the renowned 16th president of the United States were primarily homosexual. <i>The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln</i>, by CA Tripp, has ruffled more than a few feathers.
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/ 16 January 2005
See Dick and Jane. See Dick and Jane get a lawyer. Pearson Education, the publishing company that owns the copyright to the single-named stars of countless United States reading primers, is suing a division of Time Warner for co-opting the characters in a book called Yiddish with Dick and Jane.
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/ 15 January 2005
The army reservist labelled the ”primary torturer” of Abu Ghraib was convicted by a military jury on Friday of abusing Iraqi prisoners after a trial the Pentagon hopes will cleanse the reputation of the US military. Specialist Charles Graner was found guilty on nine of 10 charges of maltreatment, assault and dereliction of duty.