NEWS RELEASE TRANSMITTED BY CCN - A NEWSWIRE SERVICE OF ITG

FOR:  VENGOLD INC.

TSE SYMBOL:  VEN
OTC Bulletin Board SYMBOL:  VENGF

APRIL 25, 2000

itemus Makes Three New Investments in Advanced Networking
Companies

TORONTO, ONTARIO--itemus Inc. (TSE:VEN, OTCBB:VENGF) announced 
today that it has made early round minority investments totaling 
nearly US$4 million in three privately held companies specializing
in next generation networking technologies - a key focus within 
itemus' overall investment strategy. 

The three new members of the rapidly growing itemus community of 
companies are Antarcti.ca Systems Inc. of Vancouver, British 
Columbia; Global Services Network Inc. of Portland, Oregon; and 
Personification Inc. of Toronto, Ontario. 

Antarcti.ca Systems is building a general-purpose mapping and 
visualization platform for large, complex networks.  Antarcti.ca 
is the culmination of a three-year R&D effort led by Tim Bray, 
co-founder of Open Text Corporation and co-inventor of Extensible 
Markup Language (XML). 

Global Services Network ("GSN") is a unified messaging company 
that uses its Polestar service platform to allow customers to 
simplify and integrate their individual communications services.  
Using Polestar, wireline, wireless, paging, voice mail and e-mail 
are integrated into a single communications hub.  The GSN 
management team comprises strong backgrounds in telecommunications
and network marketing.  The unified messaging market is expected 
to exceed $2 billion annually within the next two years.  GSN's 
innovative intelligent communication agent system positions the 
company to be a clear market leader in this space. 

Personification uses cutting-edge technology and techniques from 
diverse disciplines to personalize the delivery of Web content to 
match the tastes and traits of individual customers.  The company 
is developing a mobile and auditory information, process, and 
communications service portal.  This portal will provide unique 
and compelling services to the rapidly growing mobile user 
population.  The flagship service will offer personalized audio 
information provided in a variety of different formats for 
different devices.  The company is led by Marc Chignell an 
acclaimed University of Toronto professor and Associate Director 
of the Knowledge Media Design Institute, and John Male a 
well-known Toronto entrepreneur and investor. 

"Each of these companies is creating revolutionary breakthroughs 
in next-generation networking platforms, part of a broad trend at 
its inflection point," said Jim Tobin, itemus' chief executive.  
"We are keen to apply the ever-increasing scale, scope and speed 
of our operations to help these strong management teams to 
'excelerate' their growth." 

itemus inc. is a New Economy corporation that creates 
revolutionary applications and business models for the Internet.  
Canadian based, but global in scope and scale, itemus participates
in all stages of the value creation process: early stage 
incubation, smart venture investment, converting bricks-and-mortar
to dot-com companies and unlocking the hidden value in public 
technology enterprises.  With development, hosting and business 
service infrastructure in several cities, itemus focuses on 
opportunities in next generation networking, financial 
intermediation for commerce, and rich media. 

itemus inc. is the proposed name for Vengold Inc. and is subject 
to approval by shareholders at the Company's annual general 
meeting on April 26 in Toronto. 

This news release may contain certain forward-looking statements 
that reflect the current views and/or expectations of itemus Inc. 
with respect to its performance, business and future events.  
These statements involve risks and uncertainties that could affect
anticipated results.  As such, results could differ significantly.

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