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/ 8 December 2007
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
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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/ 6 December 2007
A lone gunman killed eight people and wounded five others before taking his own life in Omaha, Nebraska, on Wednesday, the worst shooting in the United States since the Virginia Tech massacre earlier this year that left 33 dead. The killer, armed with a rifle, went on a rampage in a mall busy with Christmas shoppers.
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/ 6 December 2007
Robert Mugabe, a largely unwelcome guest of the European Union at a summit this weekend, is a hero in the eyes of many Africans for daring to stand up to the West and seize land from white farmers. Many in Europe have been left scratching their heads over how Zimbabwe’s president since independence still commands respect.
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/ 6 December 2007
Climate scientists from around the world urged delegates at United Nations-led talks in Bali on Thursday to make deeper and swifter cuts to greenhouse emissions to prevent dangerous global warming. In a declaration, more than 200 scientists said governments had a window of only 10 to 15 years for global emissions to peak and decline.
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/ 5 December 2007
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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/ 4 December 2007
Israel said on Tuesday it believed that Iran had restarted its atomic-weapons programme and that a United States-backed campaign to curb Tehran’s nuclear ambitions must continue despite a US report it had halted the work. ”It is vital to pursue efforts to prevent Iran from developing a capability like this,” Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told reporters.
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/ 4 December 2007
United States intelligence agencies undercut the White House on Monday by disclosing for the first time that Iran has not been pursuing a nuclear weapons development programme for the past four years. The secret report, which was declassified on Monday and published, marked a significant shift from previous estimates.
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/ 3 December 2007
About 190 nations met in Bali on Monday seeking a breakthrough to a new global pact to fight climate change by 2009 to avert droughts, heatwaves and rising seas that will hit the poor hardest. A new treaty is meant to widen the Kyoto Protocol, which binds 36 industrial countries to cut greenhouse-gas emissions by 5% below 1990 levels by 2008 to 2012.
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/ 2 December 2007
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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/ 2 December 2007
Activists and global leaders used World Aids Day on Saturday to warn against complacency in fighting the disease and called on governments to fill a multibillion-dollar funding gap. ”We have made tangible and remarkable progress on all these fronts. But we must do more,” United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said.
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/ 1 December 2007
Activists on Saturday sought to keep the battle against HIV in the public eye on World Aids Day in the face of growing complacency amid progress in treating and slowing the spread of the disease. The December 1 event is traditionally a time of grim stocktaking as Aids campaigners sound the alarm over the disease’s rampage through Africa.
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/ 30 November 2007
Turkey’s prime minister said on Friday his Cabinet had authorised the armed forces to conduct a cross-border operation against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq, but analysts said major action did not appear imminent. Tayyip Erdogan’s comments seemed chiefly designed to keep up pressure on United States and Iraqi forces to honour pledges to tackle the rebels.
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/ 30 November 2007
United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will visit Ethiopia next week for meetings on the conflicts in the volatile African Great Lakes region and Sudan and Somalia, said the State Department on Thursday. Rice, a rare visitor to the African continent, will make her third trip to sub-Saharan Africa since becoming Secretary of State in 2005.
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/ 29 November 2007
President Pervez Musharraf promised on Thursday to lift Pakistan’s state of emergency on December 16, making a long-awaited gesture of reconciliation hours after being sworn in as a civilian leader. Addressing the nation on television, Musharraf said he would also restore the Constitution, which was suspended when he declared emergency rule on November 3.
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/ 29 November 2007
Pakistan’s Pervez Musharraf was sworn in as president for a second term on Thursday, but this time as a civilian and without his army uniform to protect him from pressure to end emergency rule. Musharraf took the oath for another five years in office from the newly installed chief justice Abdul Hameed Dogar.
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/ 29 November 2007
Australia’s Prime Minister-elect Kevin Rudd unveiled his Cabinet on Thursday, prioritising education, industrial relations and the environment in a break with conservative predecessor John Howard’s legacy. Calling it "a team with fresh ideas", Rudd included four women and a former rock star in the Cabinet.
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/ 28 November 2007
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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/ 28 November 2007
Australia’s Prime Minister-elect Kevin Rudd arrived in the nation’s capital on Wednesday to choose his new Cabinet, aides said, as outgoing John Howard and his vanquished team cleared out their desks. Rudd (50) stormed to power in a landslide election victory on Saturday that wiped out Howard’s conservative government after almost 12 years in office.
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/ 28 November 2007
Zimbabwe’s government newspaper offered a chilly, racially tinged welcome on Tuesday to the new United States envoy. The Herald‘s political editor Caesar Zvayi said James McGee had criticised Zimbabwe’s human rights record in statements to the US Senate and, as an appointee of US President George Bush, was likely ”to turn out to be the house Negro”.
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/ 28 November 2007
United States President George Bush has set himself the herculean task of shepherding an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal by the end of next year, but doubts remain about his commitment. Talks on borders, settlements, the status of Jerusalem and the fate of Palestinian refugees — are to begin on December 12.
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/ 27 November 2007
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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/ 27 November 2007
He denounces it as the ”Great Satan”, but the overtures of the Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to the United States seem to grow ever more extravagant. Having failed to win a response with a letter to President George Bush, Ahmadinejad has offered himself as an observer in next year’s presidential election.
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/ 27 November 2007
President George Bush launched a United States drive to create a Palestinian state on Monday, with Israelis and Palestinians nearing an agreement to address the toughest issues of their decades-old conflict. His legacy dominated by war in Iraq, Bush began three days of Middle East diplomacy in separate Oval Office meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
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/ 26 November 2007
Israeli and Palestinian negotiators neared an agreement on Monday on a peace agenda ahead of a new drive by United States President George Bush to restart long-dormant talks to create a Palestinian state. Expectations were low for three days of meetings in Washington and nearby Annapolis, Maryland.
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/ 26 November 2007
United States President George Bush meets Palestinian and Israeli leaders on Monday in a last-ditch push for Palestinian statehood before he leaves office in 14 months. Expectations are low for three days of talks because Bush, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas all face political challenges at home.
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/ 25 November 2007
Incoming Labour prime minister Kevin Rudd, a Mandarin-speaking former diplomat, has pledged closer Australian ties with overseas allies and unity at home after ending 11 years of conservative rule under John Howard. Rudd (50) has promised to pull Australian troops out of Iraq and sign the Kyoto Protocol.
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/ 25 November 2007
Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Barack Obama once electrified the United States by preaching a ”politics of hope”. Unfortunately Obama then found himself outsmarted and outfought by his chief rival, Senator Hillary Clinton. Now Obama has, in effect, relaunched his campaign, coming out fighting against Clinton.
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/ 25 November 2007
Hamas officials have issued stark warnings that the Israeli-Palestinian peace conference in Annapolis this week is likely to result in more violence rather than settlement, including a threat from the group to escalate its own ”resistance” to Israeli occupation.
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/ 23 November 2007
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned on Friday that the failure of new peace efforts would be ”deadly” as new polls showed Israelis and Palestinians equally pessimistic about its chances of success. Most Israelis and Palestinians do not think the meeting, opening on Tuesday in the United States, will succeed, according to separate opinion polls.
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/ 22 November 2007
Pakistan on Thursday faced suspension from the Commonwealth for the second time in eight years after failing to meet a deadline for lifting emergency rule. In a conversation on Wednesday, the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, made a final plea to President Pervez Musharraf to lift the state of emergency.
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/ 21 November 2007
A breakthrough in stem-cell research could give United States President George Bush and his anti-abortion allies a political benefit in a debate Democrats have long been planning to use in next year’s elections. Stem cells extracted from embryos a few days old can morph into any type of tissue.