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Brazil is so loaded with talent that it could probably field the best two teams in the World Cup. Lucky for hosts Germany and a handful of other upset hopefuls, the rules for the world’s most popular sporting event allow only one team per country. And who might be best prepared to upset the Brazilians?
Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer held crisis talks on Saturday with the leaders of East Timor, trying to end the worst violence here since the tiny nation split from Indonesia seven years ago. Downer met President Xanana Gusmao, Foreign and Defence Minister Jose Ramos Horta and Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri.
Idaho, to borrow a term gaining popularity on left-wing blogs, is part of ”Bushlandia”: the three remaining American states, clustered in the mountainous west, where the president still enjoys approval ratings of 50% or more. According to the latest polls, Idaho tops the league at 52%, with neighbours Utah and Wyoming on 51% and 50%.
American soldiers have been cleared of deliberately killing Iraqi civilians in one of several incidents that have raised questions about the conduct of the occupying force, it emerged on Friday. But United States marines still face murder charges for two other incidents.
Blackmailed into a web of treason woven from their own deceit and sexual transgressions, Jefal and his lover faced the justice of the street this week when the 25-year-old Palestinian father was dragged blindfolded into the heart of Balata refugee camp in the West Bank and shot as the worst kind of traitor — a collaborator with Israel.
At least 10 suspects were arrested in the Toronto area on Friday on terrorism-related charges, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said. The Canadian Press quoted an unnamed police source as saying the charges were related to an explosives plot in Ontario, Canada’s largest province.
Monty Coles was 900m in the air when he discovered a stowaway peeking out at him from the plane’s instrument panel — a 1,35m black snake. Coles had left Charleston earlier for a leisurely flight alone over the West Virginia countryside last Saturday in his Piper Cherokee.
The minister of home affairs will hear on Monday whether she will have to give reasons why her department should not be compelled to supply information about the deportation of Pakistani national Khalid Mahmood Rashid. This follows an application by Rashid’s lawyer, Zehir Omar.
A high-level United Nations meeting on Aids agreed on Friday on a global strategy to fight the epidemic — but civil groups slammed the strategy for a lack of specific commitments and for coy references to high-risk groups like prostitutes. The declaration is the first of its kind since a landmark UN Aids summit in 2001.
No frontier marks the entrance to Spain’s Basque region, but the traveller passing by quaint villages on green hillsides has a clear sense of entering a distinct territory. It is not just the Basque flags here and there. It is, above all, the signs in a strange language unlike any other in the world.