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/ 25 February 2008
Foreigners wander freely among the handsome stone and baked-brick houses of Sanaa’s Old City, but elsewhere in Yemen al-Qaeda attacks have damaged a fledgling tourism industry already hurt by tribal kidnappings. The government, which hopes tourism earnings can help offset flagging oil revenues, is struggling to shore up security by providing armed police escorts for travel to certain areas.
If rising sea levels force the people of the Maldive Islands to seek new homes, who will look after them in a world already turning warier of refugees? The daunting prospect of mass population movements set off by climate change and environmental disasters poses an imminent new challenge.
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/ 24 January 2007
Protesters bent on toppling Lebanon’s Cabinet blocked roads with blazing tyres on Tuesday, sparking clashes with government loyalists in which police said three people were killed and 133 people hurt. The violence raised the stakes in a campaign by Iranian- and Syrian-backed Hezbollah and its Shi’ite and Christian allies to oust Prime Minister Fouad Siniora’s Western-supported government.
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/ 19 September 2006
Israel dropped at least 350 000 cluster bomblets on south Lebanon in its war with Hezbollah guerrillas, mostly when the conflict was all but over, leaving a deadly legacy for civilians. ”The outrageous fact is that nearly all of these munitions were fired in the last three to four days of the war,” said David Shearer, the United Nations humanitarian coordinator in Lebanon.
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/ 6 September 2006
Israel said on Wednesday it would lift an eight-week-old air and sea blockade of Lebanon on Thursday, handing over control to international forces. It said Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had been told by United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan that ”international forces are ready to take over control posts”.
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/ 6 September 2006
Israel said on Wednesday it could gradually dismantle its blockade of Lebanon as Lebanese and United Nations forces control entry points to stop Hezbollah rearming, and the UN commander in the south said a breakthrough could be close.
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/ 5 September 2006
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan said on Tuesday he hoped for word on the lifting of an Israeli blockade on Lebanon within two days as the shape of a carefully orchestrated deal involving France, Italy and Germany emerged. In Egypt Annan said he hoped the next 48 hours would bring ”positive” news on the lifting of the Israeli embargo.
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/ 5 September 2006
Lebanese troops moved on Tuesday into a town wrecked by Israel’s war with Hezbollah, as United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan said he hoped for word on the lifting of an Israeli blockade on Lebanon within two days. Troops in armoured carriers, trucks and jeeps rolled into the shattered Shi’ite Muslim town of Bint Jbeil that was the scene of some of the fiercest fighting.
Lebanon should cling to the United Nations Security Council to avoid being sucked into the orbit of any outside power as it emerges from Israel’s devastating war with Hezbollah guerrillas, former President Amin Gemayel said. ”Lebanon is a battlefield for others,” said the 63-year-old Maronite Christian leader — who should know.
Like a small black football, it lies in the dirt not far from Haitham Daaboul’s front door in the southern Lebanese town of Bint Jbeil. It looks innocuous, but a careless kick from a passing child would detonate this cluster bomb, one of thousands of unexploded devices Israel scattered over the towns, villages and hillsides of south Lebanon.