Because the text is between pre tags
That is, it's preformatted text. The browser should render this as if it was in a plain text text editor; monospace font, and all spaces etc maintained. So, the browser is rendering the hard returns, and then adding a break.
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* Jack Troughton jake at jakesplace.dhs.org *
* [link|http://jakesplace.dhs.org|[link|http://jakesplace.dhs.org|http://jakesplace.dhs.org]] [link|ftp://jakesplace.dhs.org|[link|ftp://jakesplace.dhs.org|ftp://jakesplace.dhs.org]] *
* Montr\ufffdal PQ Canada [link|news://jakesplace.dhs.org|news://jakesplace.dhs.org] *
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