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/ 26 February 2008

Musical diplomacy as NY Phil plays Pyongyang

Cold War foes the United States and North Korea enjoyed a rare moment of harmony on Tuesday when the New York Philharmonic played an unprecedented concert in the hermit state. An audience of North Korea’s communist elite gave America’s oldest orchestra a standing ovation after a rousing set that took in Dvorak, Gershwin and a Korean folk song

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/ 13 February 2008

Venezuela halts oil supplies to Exxon Mobil

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez stopped oil exports to Exxon Mobil on Tuesday, escalating a multibillion-dollar fight with the United States company two days after threatening to cut off all supplies to America. The anti-US president’s retaliation for Exxon’s legal offensive pushed oil prices higher in late trading.

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/ 11 February 2008

Bush orders clampdown on flights to US

The United States administration is pressing the 27 governments of the European Union to sign up for a range of new security measures for transatlantic travel, including allowing armed guards on all flights from Europe to America by US airlines. The demand to put armed air marshals on to the flights is part of a travel clampdown by the Bush administration.

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/ 2 February 2008

US campaign frenzy ahead of Super Tuesday

White House hopefuls have launched a frantic blitz with the stakes enormous heading into ”Super Tuesday” and the home stretch of the costliest and longest United States election campaign in history. Democratic rivals Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were criss-crossing the country over the weekend.

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/ 30 January 2008

US economic growth weakest in five years

United States growth skidded lower in the fourth quarter and was the weakest in five years for all of 2007, according to a government report on Wednesday that highlighted the toll an enfeebled housing sector has taken on the national economy. The dollar’s value declined against other major currencies on the soft GDP data.

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/ 11 January 2008

Doubts grow over Iranian boat threats

Doubts intensified on Thursday night over the nature of an alleged aggressive confrontation by Iranian patrol boats and American warships in the Persian Gulf on Sunday, after Pentagon officials admitted that they could not confirm that a threat to blow up the US ships had been made directly by the Iranian crews involved in the incident.

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/ 7 January 2008

Obama jumps into the lead in New Hampshire

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton battled to keep crucial New Hampshire from swinging to rising rival Barack Obama on Sunday but new polls showed him jumping into the lead. In the hotly contested Republican race, Arizona Senator John McCain leaped ahead of former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney even as Romney tried to raise doubts about McCain.

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/ 5 January 2008

N Korea nuclear talks stalled amid disputes

International efforts to put an end to North Korea’s nuclear programme appeared to hit a snag on Saturday after Pyongyang defiantly insisted it had lived up to its end of a six-party disarmament deal. North Korea agreed last February to give up its nuclear-weapons programmes in return for one million tonnes of fuel oil or equivalent energy aid.

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/ 20 December 2007

Bush to make first presidential visit to Israel

United States President George Bush is to embark on a week-long tour of the Middle East in the new year to nudge Israelis and Palestinians towards an end to their decades-long conflict and to bolster an Arab coalition against Iran. It will be the first time in his seven years as president that Bush will have visited Israel, the West Bank, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states.

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/ 8 December 2007

Anger as library makes exhibition of Bush

A series of six black-and-white prints on display in an unassuming corner of the New York Public Library have sparked controversy on the airwaves and blogosphere quite out of keeping with the dark, marble-lined corridor in which they are hung. The prints show the mugshots of main members of the Bush administration.

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/ 8 December 2007

How intelligence expert rewrote book on Iran

The intelligence came from an exotic variety of sources: there was the so-called Laptop of Death; there was the Iranian commander who mysteriously disappeared in Turkey. But pivotal to the United States investigation into Iran’s suspect nuclear-weapons programme was the work of a little-known intelligence specialist, Thomas Fingar.

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/ 7 December 2007

CIA destroyed video of ‘waterboarding’ detainees

The CIA destroyed video evidence of the coercive interrogation of al-Qaeda operatives held under its secret rendition programme in order to shield agents from prosecution, it was revealed on Thursday. The decision to destroy two videotapes documenting the use of waterboarding against Abu Zubaydah and another high-value al-Qaeda detainee was made in November 2005.

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/ 5 December 2007

Iranian president claims US report as a victory

Jubilant Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on Wednesday said the United States report confirming his country had abandoned its nuclear weapons programme was a ”declaration of victory”. ”This was a final shot to those who, in the past several years, spread a sense of threat and concern in the world through lies of nuclear weapons.” Ahmadinejad said.

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/ 2 December 2007

Chávez for life? Venezuelans to vote on re-election

Venezuelans vote in a tightly contested referendum on Sunday on whether to allow left-wing President Hugo Chávez to stay in power for as long as he keeps winning elections or hand him his first defeat at the polls. The anti-American firebrand, who has easily won one election after another against a fragmented opposition, is in the hardest campaign of his life.

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/ 1 December 2007

Bush handed blueprint to seize Pakistan’s nukes

The man who devised the Bush administration’s Iraq troop surge has urged the United States to consider sending elite troops to Pakistan to seize its nuclear weapons if the country descends into chaos. In a series of scenarios drawn up for Pakistan, Frederick Kagan has called for the White House to consider various options for an unstable Pakistan.

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/ 30 November 2007

We can defeat Aids, says Tutu

Statistics that indicated HIV/Aids numbers were lower than previously thought was cold comfort, Archbishop Desmond Tutu said on Friday. Speaking in Pretoria a day before World Aids Day, Tutu said that while the country might say things had improved, it was unacceptable that 600 people died of Aids everyday in South Africa.

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/ 29 November 2007

World Bank launches new Aids strategy for Africa

Overtaken as the largest funder of global HIV/Aids programmes, the World Bank is now focusing on easing the economic damage inflicted by the syndrome in Africa and finding ways of controlling its spread through better prevention, care and treatment. Global funding for HIV/Aids reached -billion in 2007 compared to ,6-billion available in 2001.

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/ 28 November 2007

Bush launches Middle East talks amid scepticism

United States President George Bush invited Israeli and Palestinian leaders to the White House to renew long-stalled peace talks on Wednesday but faced deep scepticism over chances for a deal. Finally embracing a hands-on approach, Bush will ceremonially inaugurate the first formal Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations in seven years.

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/ 27 November 2007

Time is right for Middle East peace, says Bush

United States President George Bush said on Tuesday it was the ”right time” for peace between Israel and the Palestinians before launching his biggest initiative to negotiate an end to the conflict. But he warned ”achieving this goal will not be easy”, according to remarks prepared for delivery at the opening later of the Annapolis peace conference.

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/ 15 November 2007

Israel braces for ‘the day after’

Israel is quietly preparing for the possibility of a nuclear-armed Iran despite public pledges to deny its arch-foe the means to pose an ”existential threat”, Israeli political and defence sources said on Thursday. Israel predicts that Iran’s nuclear programme could produce warheads by 2009.

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/ 12 November 2007

Merkel, Sarkozy to discuss Iran after Bush visits

The leaders of Germany and France meet on Monday to compare notes on dealing with Iran’s nuclear programme, fresh from discussing tougher sanctions during separate visits to United States President George Bush last week. German Chancellor Angela Merkel will host French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Berlin for the talks a week before an expected meeting of world powers.