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/ 20 October 2007
The British government is welcome to stay away from the Africa Union (AU) and European Union (EU) summit in December, said African National Congress secretary general, Kgalema Motlanthe. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has stated he would not attend the summit if Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe is allowed to attend.
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/ 19 October 2007
Former British prime minister Tony Blair would be a good choice as the European Union’s first full-time president, French and British leaders said on Friday while stressing that the job is not yet on offer. Blair’s successor, Gordon Brown, praised Blair’s current role as international Middle East envoy, and said he would be a strong candidate for any similar high-profile role.
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/ 19 October 2007
The Pakistan government blamed Islamist militants for twin blasts early on Friday that killed 133 people as opposition leader Benazir Bhutto drove through masses of supporters in Karachi. Bhutto, travelling in a truck reinforced to withstand bomb attacks, was unhurt by the deadliest bomb attack in her country’s violent history.
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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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/ 19 October 2007
Sweden and Finland on Thursday called for Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe to be excluded from a European Union-Africa summit in December but left open whether they would join a British boycott if he showed up. Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen also said he had not decided whether to attend the summit in Lisbon if Mugabe came.
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/ 19 October 2007
A suspected suicide bomber killed 133 people on Friday in an attack on former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto, as she was driven through Karachi to greet supporters on her return from eight years in exile. Bhutto was unhurt in one of the deadliest attacks in her country’s history.
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/ 18 October 2007
Burma’s ruling junta on Thursday night announced the formation of a Constitution Drafting Commission, another step in the government’s ”road map” to democracy that is supposed to lead to free elections some time in the future. The move came after the junta brutally suppressed pro-democracy demonstrations last month.
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/ 18 October 2007
French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife Cecilia have divorced by mutual consent after an often tempestuous 11-year marriage, the Presidency announced on Thursday. The Elysee Palace released a statement to confirm the split as weeks of speculation reached fever pitch and newspapers for the first time devoted extensive front-page reports to the collapse of the marriage.
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/ 18 October 2007
The Zimbabwean government’s isolation from the international economic arena has forced it to turn right while indicating left. The country’s Deputy Minister of Industry and International Trade recently made a startling admission when he said that the European Union remains the troubled Southern African country’s key trade partner.
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/ 18 October 2007
The European Union has given a cautious welcome to the outcome of a summit of three big developing countries. The leaders of Brazil, India and South Africa on Wednesday reaffirmed their commitment to seeking a deal in the long-delayed World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) Doha round of global free-trade talks that was ”fair and acceptable to all”.
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/ 17 October 2007
One of Germany’s greatest treasuries of books, the Bavarian State Library in Munich, said on Tuesday it had set a robot to work ”reading” the books and storing more than 7,5-million images of the pages in its digital memory. The device uses gentle suction and a breath of air to turn the pages.
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/ 17 October 2007
The struggling global trade negotiations are looming large over a South Africa-India-Brazil summit this week, after the United States said the developing countries were putting the talks in peril by refusing to open up their manufacturing markets. The three countries came together around 2000 to strengthen ties between developing countries.
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/ 17 October 2007
Burma’s ruling junta blamed Buddhist monks Wednesday for last month’s violent crackdown on pro-democracy protests, as it admitted nearly 3 000 people had been detained over the rallies. Troops and police quelled the protests in late September, leaving at least 13 dead and drawing international condemnation.
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/ 16 October 2007
Landmark weekend parliamentary elections in Togo were ”free, fair and open”, observers from the Economic Community of West African States concluded in a report on Tuesday. ”In spite of a few shortfalls, the legislative elections on Sunday were free, fair and open,” stated the 15-nation group.
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/ 16 October 2007
The United Nations made a last appeal on Monday for rebel Congolese soldiers to rejoin the national army. Democratic Republic of Congo President Joseph Kabila had given renegade General Laurent Nkunda until Monday to send his fighters to army integration centres or see them forcibly disarmed.
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/ 16 October 2007
Environmentalist lawyers are threatening to sue Apple in 60 days if the iconic United States company doesn’t make iPhones greener or warn buyers of toxins in the devices. The Centre for Environmental Health sent Apple notice on Monday after Greenpeace released a scientific analysis of how Earth-friendly iPhones are.
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/ 15 October 2007
The European Union should tell British Prime Minister Gordon Brown to ”shut up” on democracy and human rights in Zimbabwe ahead of an Africa-EU summit in December, Zimbabwe’s information minister said on Monday. Minister Sikhanyiso Ndlovu said that Brown had no right to lecture Zimbabwe when he himself was ”running away” with power.
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/ 15 October 2007
Twenty people were killed in ethnic clashes in east Chad after the desertion of former rebels loyal to the defence minister stoked tensions in the region bordering Sudan’s Darfur, government sources said on Monday. The violence between the Tama and Zaghawa communities broke out after an armed group of Tama fighters abandoned the eastern town of Guereda last week.
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/ 15 October 2007
United Nations special envoy Ibrahim Gambari told Burma on Monday to stop arresting dissidents and Thailand proposed a regional forum including China and India to nudge the reclusive military junta towards democratic reform. Gambari said the continued arrests and intimidation of activists were ”extremely disturbing”.
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/ 14 October 2007
The people of Togo go to the polls on Sunday to choose MPs in elections where all the main political parties are represented, including Gilchrist Olympio’s Union of Forces for Change (UFC). After almost two decades of election boycotts, this is the first time that Olympio’s UFC is challenging the ruling Rally of Togolese People.
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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.
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/ 12 October 2007
New limits on catches of the endangered Patagonian toothfish, regarded as a culinary delicacy in Japan, have been imposed by a Namibia-based regional fishing organisation. Hashali Hamukuaya, executive of the South East Atlantic Fisheries Organisation, said its scientific committee had recommended the limit on the fish.
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/ 11 October 2007
Togo holds parliamentary elections on Sunday that, if free and fair, could convince international donors that the small West African state has fully embraced democratic rule. The European Union, once Togo’s biggest donor, froze most aid to the former French colony in 1993.
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/ 11 October 2007
Russia’s latest outburst of passive-aggressive paranoia, aimed at Britain in particular, may reflect a realisation in the Kremlin that Western resistance to its perceived bullying of neighbours, disdain for civil and human rights, and cut-throat energy policy is growing after years of blind eyes, held noses and wishful thinking.
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/ 11 October 2007
South Africa is confident that a ”critical number” of European and African leaders would be in attendance at the planned European Union (EU)-African Union (AU) summit in Portugal in December to make it worthwhile. Foreign Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma said: ”Summits depend on a number of people to be there, not just one person.”
Women are being regularly tortured by Zimbabwean security forces for their opposition to President Robert Mugabe’s regime, a report by a leading rights group charged on Tuesday. ”Many of us have been detained more than once and suffered extreme abuse perpetrated by state actors,” Jenni Williams, national coordinator of Women of Zimbabwe Arise, said.
A review of the free-trade treaty between the European Union and South Africa is to top the agenda of a South Africa-EU troika ministerial meeting in Pretoria on Wednesday. South Africa’s ambassador to the EU, Anil Sooklal, said it is hoped the mid-term review of the trade treaty could be finalised during the troika meeting.
Guns, machetes and looted public funds are the real instruments of power in Nigeria, where politicians backed by unelected ”godfathers” use hired thugs to win office, Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday. Nigeria returned to civilian rule in 1999 after three decades of almost continuous army dictatorship, but civilian governments have routinely abused basic human rights.
Turkey’s Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, came under intense pressure on Monday night to order an invasion of northern Iraq following the deadliest attacks for over a decade on the Turkish military and civilians by separatist Kurdish guerrillas.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown warned on Monday that neither he nor any other senior British government minister will attend a Europe-Africa summit if Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe is there. Previously Brown had said he would boycott the December summit, but it has been unclear if Britain could be represented at a lower level.
Climate change is already happening in South Africa, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Saturday during a visit to a biodiversity centre in Cape Town. ”You can see that climate change is already a reality here,” said Merkel, as she visited Biota Africa, a centre where German and South African scientists conduct research on African climate change.
Protests against Burma’s bloody crackdown on dissenters took place in cities around the world on Saturday, with thousands demonstrating in London and smaller gatherings held in Sydney, Stockholm, Bangkok, Paris and elsewhere. The coordinated displays of public condemnation followed the violent crackdown by Burma’s junta on thousands of activists in late September.