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/ 3 November 2007
Hurricane Noel on Friday churned over the Atlantic Ocean on a northerly track to Canada after battering the Caribbean where it killed at least 122 people in the Dominican Republic and Haiti. It is expected to slam into Nova Scotia over the weekend still packing powerful winds, but no longer bearing the characteristics of a tropical cyclone.
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/ 31 October 2007
European Union and African ministers met in Accra, Ghana, on Wednesday to decide whether to risk a diplomatic storm by inviting Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe to an EU-Africa summit. Britain has said it will boycott the proposed summit in Lisbon if Mugabe attends. Some African nations have said they will stay away if the Zimbabwean leader is not invited.
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/ 30 October 2007
Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe will be invited to attend the second European Union-Africa summit in December in Lisbon, a Portuguese official said on Tuesday. Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown, with some backing in Europe, has indicated neither he nor any other senior minister will attend the summit if the Zimbabwean leader does.
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/ 23 October 2007
Europe’s top court on Tuesday overturned a German law that protects Volkswagen against takeovers, allowing Porsche to tighten its grip on the wheel of the continent’s biggest carmaker. The European Court of Justice ruled against the "Volkswagen Law", thereby upholding Porsche’s claim to voting rights in line with its 31% stake in VW.
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/ 23 October 2007
Talks on a deal to free up world trade are making progress, developing country leaders said on Monday, but the chairperson of key industry negotiations said more needed to be done to reach an agreement. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said the Doha round of trade could end in a deal by the end of the year.
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/ 22 October 2007
Microsoft ended three years of resistance on Monday and finally agreed to comply with a landmark 2004 antitrust decision by the European Commission. The defeated software giant announced it would not appeal against a decisive European Union court ruling two months ago that backed the commission.
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/ 19 October 2007
European Union leaders voiced relief at clinching a deal on Friday on a treaty to reform the 27-nation bloc’s institutions, replacing a defunct constitution and ending a two-year crisis of confidence in Europe’s future. ”It’s an important page in the history of Europe,” Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Socrates said on arriving to chair the second day of an EU summit.
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/ 14 October 2007
The president of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, has launched a rare attack on Gordon Brown ahead of the crucial Lisbon summit on the European Union reform treaty this week, warning that the British Prime Minister is putting the international fight against terrorism at risk.
European Union and Chinese trade officials have agreed on a new way to handle Chinese textile exports to the bloc when quotas expire on December 31. Officials said the plan might help improve cooperation between the EU and China over the Asian economic powerhouse’s snowballing trade surplus with the 27-nation bloc.
The European Union is to hold an extraordinary meeting of national gas experts to discuss the dispute between Ukraine and Russian gas monopoly Gazprom, officials said on Wednesday. The EU Gas Coordination Group will hold an ad-hoc meeting later this month to ”evaluate the situation” and assess its ”possible consequences”.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has lost his campaign to prevent President Robert Mugabe from attending a Europe-Africa summit in Portugal in December despite the European Union (EU) travel ban on the Zimbabwean president. Brown is also facing stiff resistance to his demand that the EU appoint a special envoy to deal with the Zimbabwe crisis.
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/ 28 September 2007
In 1974 Richard Nixon, the United States president, was ready to support the release on humanitarian grounds of prisoner number seven, but his efforts were thwarted by unwavering Soviet opposition. So Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s former deputy, dubbed ”the loneliest man in the world” remained locked up.
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/ 27 September 2007
Developing countries are willing to do more when it comes to tackling climate change, but the ”trigger” has to come from the North, Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism Marthinus van Schalkwyk said on Thursday. In a speech prepared for delivery in Washington, he said participants in such efforts had to include the United States.
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/ 26 September 2007
A two-year bridge-building project in Angola has reopened a vital road to a large area of the country’s isolated eastern Moxico province, destroyed during a 27-year civil war, the United Nations said on Wednesday. The main road leading to Lumbula N’guimbo was heavily mined during the war, which ended in 2002.
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/ 22 September 2007
Aid agencies have appealed for millions of dollars to help more than one million Africans affected by deadly floods that have swept across the continent. The floods have killed at least 200 people and displaced hundreds of thousands in 17 countries since the summer, including Burkina Faso, Ghana, Togo, Uganda and Kenya.
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/ 21 September 2007
Gordon Brown or Robert Mugabe? One won’t go to a summit between Europe and Africa in December, but the Portuguese hosts say the potential rewards of closer ties between the two continents outweigh the antagonism between the leaders of Britain and Zimbabwe.
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/ 17 September 2007
A European Union court upheld most of a landmark 2004 European Commission antitrust decision against Microsoft on Monday in a crucial victory for the European competition regulator against the United States software giant. The EU’s Court of First Instance dismissed Microsoft’s appeal on all substantive points.
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/ 5 September 2007
Seven developing countries in Africa and Asia will be the first to take part in a new global health campaign aimed at directing aid more effectively at the basic needs of poor countries. Health ministers from Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Zambia, Cambodia and Nepal will take part in the launch of the initiative at British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s office later on Wednesday.
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/ 4 September 2007
Gaz de France and Suez on Monday agreed to create the world’s third-largest listed power and gas company after President Nicolas Sarkozy stepped in to prevent the 18-month old deal from collapsing. The politically charged ”merger of equals”, delayed by disputes over valuation and control, will be on the basis of 21 Gaz de France shares for 22 Suez shares.
Forest fires that have devastated southern Greece and claimed 63 lives in eight days died down on Friday, but emergency services feared a new heatwave could rekindle some blazes. ”Things are going well,” a fire-service spokesperson said, adding that the fires were no longer threatening populated areas.
Verification of the large ”diamond” claimed to have been found in the North West this week could take few weeks, a shareholder of the company laying claim to it was reported as saying on Wednesday. Brett Jolly told the Associated Press: ”It’s totally unbelievable. You just don’t expect this kind of thing to happen.”