Democrat Hillary Clinton defied the polls and upset Barack Obama in New Hampshire on Tuesday, breathing new life into her United States presidential campaign after a third-place finish in Iowa. Republican John McCain, meanwhile, capped his rise from the political scrap heap with a win over Mitt Romney.
African Union chief John Kufuor was due in Nairobi on Tuesday on a crucial mission to broker talks between Kenya’s rival leaders and end the political turmoil that has claimed hundreds of lives. Ahead of Kufuor’s arrival, President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga jousted with various proposals that would allow the two men to sit down together.
Iranian speedboats swarmed three United States navy ships in the strategic Strait of Hormuz over the weekend, radioing a threat to blow them up and prompting a stiff US warning ahead of President George Bush’s trip to the Middle East, Pentagon officials said on Monday.
Israeli officials in Jerusalem are to deploy more than 10 000 police officers in a vast security operation ahead of the arrival this week of George Bush, the first United States president to visit in a decade. Graffiti are being cleaned off walls, road markings are being repainted and hundreds of American flags are being put up across the city.
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.
Hillary Clinton launched a searing attack on surging rival Barack Obama, as polls showed he could inflict a second body blow to her White House hopes in Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary. Clinton used a tense face-to-face debate, three days before the next crucial 2008 test, to argue her rival was inconsistent and inexperienced.
Kenya’s President Mwai Kibaki said on Saturday he was ready to form a government of national unity to end post-election violence that has killed hundreds of people and forced 250 000 to flee their homes. The development could be a breakthrough after a week-long stalemate between Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga.
President Mwai Kibaki is open to the idea of a coalition government to end Kenya’s post-election crisis but only if the opposition meets his terms, South African Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu said on Friday. ”There is a great deal of hope,” said Tutu, trying to mediate to end turmoil that has killed more than 300 people and threatened one of Africa’s strongest economies.
Barack Obama took a big step on Thursday towards becoming the first black United States president as his campaign for change caught fire in Iowa and swept him past Hillary Clinton in the opening Democratic nominating contest. Republican underdog Mike Huckabee capped a stunning political rise to beat rival Mitt Romney in Iowa.
Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and other White House hopefuls beseeched Iowans to vote to change America as they sought to land an early blow in Thursday’s crucial first 2008 nominating clash. Both Democratic and Republican races were too close to call, before more than 200 000 activists cast their judgements in the fabled Iowa caucuses.
Gunmen killed a United States government aid agency official and his driver in Khartoum on Tuesday, US and Sudanese officials said. The unknown assailants opened fire as the official from the US Agency for International Development was heading home in an embassy vehicle shortly after midnight on New Year’s Day, diplomatic sources said.
Despite a drop in United States casualties in the past six months, 2007 has proved the deadliest year for American forces in Iraq since the invasion, with at least 896 soldiers killed, according to a tally based on Pentagon figures. The previous most lethal year for the American military since the US-led invasion of March 2003 was in 2004, when 846 soldiers died.
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/ 30 December 2007
Security forces were on alert on Sunday in the Sunni regions of Iraq where Saddam Hussein drew his most fervent support, as loyalists of the ousted dictator marked the first anniversary of his execution. Police and troops were patrolling the village of Awja, Saddam’s birthplace and where he now lies buried.
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/ 30 December 2007
Clad in an orange and grey hunting jacket and an orange cap, Mike Huckabee raised his 12-gauge shotgun, took aim and fired, bagging a pheasant for the benefit of watching reporters. As another shot flew over their heads, it became too much for one journalist who cried: ”Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Don’t shoot. This is traumatising.”
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/ 29 December 2007
Benazir Bhutto’s party challenged official versions of the opposition leader’s assassination and accused the government on Saturday of trying to cover up failures just days before planned elections. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda-linked militants denied being behind the killing of the 54-year-old former prime minister.
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/ 29 December 2007
Bringing Saddam Hussein to book for the crimes of his regime was supposed to symbolise the restoration of the rule of law after decades of tyranny in Iraq, but instead his hanging a year ago on Sunday drew accusations of victors’ justice. Footage captured on a cellphone of his executioners taunting him before putting him to death sparked criticism.
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/ 28 December 2007
Benazir Bhutto was laid to rest next to her father in the family mausoleum on Friday after the opposition leader’s assassination plunged Pakistan into crisis and triggered violent protests across her native Sindh province. Thousands of mourners wept as Bhutto was carried from her ancestral home in Sindh to the mausoleum.
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/ 28 December 2007
Pakistan pointed a finger on Friday at al-Qaeda for the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, as her body was taken to her ancestral home for burial and anger at her death erupted into deadly unrest. The scale of the violence left the nuclear-armed Muslim nation shell-shocked, triggering alarm around the world.
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/ 28 December 2007
Barack Obama rejected rival Hillary Clinton’s vow to forge change on Thursday, as polls showed a tight Democratic White House race in Iowa, a week before the state’s lead-off nominating clash. In a soaring new speech, the Democratic senator sharpened his attacks on the former first lady.
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/ 28 December 2007
The body of Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was taken to her family village for burial on Friday, a day after her assassination plunged the nuclear-armed country into one of the worst crises in its 60-year history. Her killing after an election rally in the city of Rawalpindi triggered a wave of violence.
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/ 27 December 2007
World leaders voiced outrage at the assassination on Thursday of Pakistan’s opposition leader Benazir Bhutto and expressed fears for the fate of the nuclear-armed state. United States President George Bush condemned the killing as a ”cowardly act”.
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/ 27 December 2007
Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was assassinated on Thursday as she left an election rally in the city of Rawalpindi, putting January 8 polls in doubt and sparking anger in her native Sindh province. State media and her party confirmed Bhutto’s death from a gun and bomb attack. ”She has been martyred,” said party official Rehman Malik.
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/ 23 December 2007
It all sounds familiar. A newly proclaimed war in a far-off land, the suspension of habeas corpus, and mass arrests of ”potentially dangerous” individuals to protect the nation from ”treason, espionage and sabotage”. Those detained would eventually have the right to a hearing, but one not bound by the rules of law.
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/ 20 December 2007
United States President George Bush, after years of holding out against proposals to combat climate change, on Wednesday signed into law an energy Bill establishing higher fuel-economy standards for new cars and other conservation measures.
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/ 20 December 2007
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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/ 19 December 2007
Time magazine named Russian President Vladimir Putin its person of the year for 2007 on Wednesday, saying he had returned his country from chaos to ”the table of world power” though at a cost to democratic principles. ”He’s not a good guy, but he’s done extraordinary things,” said Time managing editor Richard Stengel.
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/ 18 December 2007
Palestinians were given a powerful signal of international and Arab support for an independent state on Monday night, with ,4-billion in aid to revive their moribund economy and bolster renewed but faltering peace negotiations with Israel.
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/ 17 December 2007
Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah has pardoned the victim of a gang-rape, whose sentencing to 200 lashes caused an international outcry, a Saudi newspaper said on Monday. The Justice Minister Abdullah bin Mohammad al-Sheikh said the king had the right to issue pardons if it was in the ”public interest”.
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/ 16 December 2007
A ”historic” Bali deal. A ”Berlin Wall” dividing rich and poor nations on global warming policy falls. And now comes the hard part. After the praise for the agreement hammered out at the Bali meeting to work out a climate treaty involving all nations by late 2009, governments will have to work out the details.
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/ 15 December 2007
Nearly 200 nations agreed at United Nations-led talks in Bali on Saturday to launch negotiations on a new pact to fight global warming after a reversal by the United States allowed a breakthrough. Washington said the agreement marked a new chapter in climate diplomacy after six years of disputes with major allies since President George Bush pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol
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/ 14 December 2007
Two convicted terrorists who had been freed in an amnesty carried out this week’s suicide bombings at United Nations and government buildings that killed 37 people, an Algerian security official said. One of the bombers was a 64-year-old man in the advanced stages of cancer, while the other was a 32-year-old from a poor suburb.
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/ 8 December 2007
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.