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/ 30 November 2007
Suited executives, grungy teens and even some savvy grannies are already using Wi-Fi to link their laptops wirelessly to the internet. It may not be long before the short-range high-speed technology is just as popular for those looking to connect music players, phones, cameras, game consoles and more.
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/ 30 November 2007
Time spent watching television will rise faster than leisure time spent on the web until 2012, while a major audience for internet video could take even longer to develop, consultancy Bain & Co said on Thursday. The data could be sobering to TV networks and web media companies, which are investing heavily in internet video sites.
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/ 28 November 2007
The RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company, which has been under intense pressure from anti-smoking groups and members of the United States Congress over print ads for its cigarettes, said it would not advertise its brands in newspapers or consumer magazines next year.
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/ 28 November 2007
The Sudanese government is putting up obstacles to the deployment of a 26 000-strong peacekeeping force for Darfur that could destroy the effectiveness of the joint United Nations-African Union mission, the United Nations peacekeeping chief warned on Tuesday.
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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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/ 21 November 2007
A masterpiece by a Mexican artist that was found in the trash by a woman who knew little about modern art has been sold for more than -million. The painting Tres Personajes, by Rufino Tamayo, was discovered in 2003 by Elizabeth Gibson, who spotted it on her morning walk on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
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/ 21 November 2007
A former child soldier in Sierra Leone’s civil war was named an ambassador for the United Nations children’s agency on Tuesday, vowing to be an advocate for children worldwide, not just in African war zones. Ishmael Beah lost his family in a rebel attack at about age 12 and and was forced to fight a deadly war.
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/ 20 November 2007
United States banking titan Citigroup may have to write off -billion in soured investments including mortgage losses in coming months, a report by Goldman Sachs predicted on Monday. Citigroup, the US’s second-largest bank by market worth, is already reeling from its exposure to the US housing downturn and tighter credit markets.
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/ 20 November 2007
Amazon.com is hoping to invigorate a nascent market for electronic books by introducing its own e-book reader with free wireless connectivity. Monday’s long-anticipated announcement comes as e-books remain a sliver of overall book sales, partly because they lack the comfort and intimacy of bound paper.
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/ 15 November 2007
A planned United Nations-African Union peace force for Darfur could fail unless disputes with Sudan over its make-up are resolved and key specialised units found. The 26 000-member force aims to bring security to the western Sudanese region after four-and-a-half years of conflict.
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/ 15 November 2007
Led by a record-breaking Jeff Koons sculpture and a -million Francis Bacon canvas, Sotheby’s roared back from a dismal Impressionist sale to score the highest total in its history at a contemporary and postwar art auction on Wednesday.
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/ 14 November 2007
Chevron, the number-two United States oil company, has agreed to pay -million to resolve criminal and civil liabilities related to procurement of oil under the United Nations oil-for-food programme, US prosecutors said on Wednesday. Chevron will not be prosecuted and will continue to cooperate with investigators, they said.
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/ 14 November 2007
Ira Levin, the playwright and novelist who wrote Rosemary’s Baby, The Stepford Wives and The Boys From Brazil, has died at the age of 78, the New York Times reported on November 13. Levin died on November 12 at his home in Manhattan, apparently of natural causes.
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/ 13 November 2007
In a nine-country survey released on Tuesday, more than 40% of respondents did not understand that HIV/Aids is always fatal. While most respondents believed that The survey from the MAC Aids Fund involved 4Â 510 interviews conducted in the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, France, China, India, Mexico, Brazil and South Africa.
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/ 13 November 2007
United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon on Monday hailed as a ”significant breakthrough” last week’s agreement by the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Rwanda to deal with illegal armed groups in the eastern DRC. Ban urged both Kinshasa and Kigali to ”act urgently to implement all the agreed measures”.
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/ 7 November 2007
Google on Monday spelled out long-rumoured plans to enter the cellphone market in 2008 by building software that could help the industry make the internet run more easily on phones. The web search company is looking to expand the range of internet services it now offers through computer browsers to the far larger cellphone market.
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/ 7 November 2007
Every day that gunshots ring out in a Mogadishu neighbourhood, every week that an explosion rips homes into plumes of dust, and every month that thousands of civilians flee the capital, Somalia plunges deeper into crisis. Last week’s resignation of Ali Mohamed Gedi, the country’s Prime Minister, is the latest shake-up in a chronology of political turmoil in the Horn of Africa state.
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/ 5 November 2007
Lance Armstrong trained harder for his second marathon, and it showed. The retired seven-time Tour de France champion improved his time by 13 minutes at the New York City Marathon on Sunday, and didn’t have to battle shin splints. ”I enjoyed it much more this year,” said Armstrong.
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/ 5 November 2007
Paula Radcliffe made a triumphant return to marathon racing and Martin Lel reprised his thrilling London victory to win at Sunday’s New York City Marathon. Radcliffe, running her first marathon in two years after taking a maternity break and recuperating from injury, beat Gete Wami after a race-long duel.
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/ 5 November 2007
An autopsy of elite runner Ryan Shay was inconclusive after the 28-year-old collapsed and died in Central Park at the United States men’s marathon Olympic trials. ”We want to take a closer look at the heart tissue,” said Ellen Borakove, spokesperson for the city medical examiner’s office
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/ 5 November 2007
As investors bet on the future of social networks, some of the biggest players in the field are due to unveil this week ways of piping in advertising to the most personal of media formats. MySpace, the world’s largest social network, is releasing details on Monday of how it is building discrete audiences out of nearly 110-million users.
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/ 5 November 2007
Public restrooms have become an unexpected source of controversy in the United States as experts argue over how the ever-essential destination can avoid discriminating by class or sex. ”In the US, but also in many other parts of the world — including India … issues having to do with human waste are taboo from public discussion. It is a last frontier,” said Harvey Molotch, a professor of cultural analysis at New York University.
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/ 4 November 2007
Bush administration officials are weighing a plan that would grant detainees at Guantánamo Bay greater rights, as part of an effort to close the facility and possibly move some of the detainees to locations in the United States locations, the New York Times reported in Sunday editions.
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/ 4 November 2007
Citigroup chief executive Charles Prince plans to resign this weekend, the Wall Street Journal said on Friday, as the widening subprime mortgage crisis brings to an end the reign of Sanford Weill’s troubled successor. The largest United States bank by assets plans to hold an emergency board meeting on Sunday, at which Prince will step down.
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/ 3 November 2007
About 1 700 people asked to be reimbursed for buying James Frey’s largely fabricated best-selling memoir, A Million Little Pieces, a lawyer said as a judge approved a settlement with disgruntled readers. United States District Judge Richard Holwell said on Friday that the settlement was ”most fair, adequate and reasonable”.
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/ 2 November 2007
The United Nations launched a new website powered by Google and network equipment maker Cisco on Thursday that will show how and where the world is succeeding or failing in meeting the Millennium Development Goals on ending poverty.
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/ 30 October 2007
The United Nations Security Council renewed arms and diamond sanctions against Côte d’Ivoire on Monday in a bid to make the West African country stick to the terms of a peace process. A resolution passed by the council extended the sanctions for a further year but promised to review them during that period.
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/ 29 October 2007
As Merrill Lynch’s board deliberates the fate of chairperson and chief executive Stan O’Neal, a leading contender for the job on Sunday said he is not aware of being a candidate. Meanwhile, Merrill’s board has reached a broad consensus to remove O’Neal as chairperson and CEO, the New York Times reported on Sunday.
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/ 27 October 2007
World oil prices surged to historic highs on Friday, breaching $92 for the first time in New York amid rising tension in crude-rich Iran and tightening United States energy supplies. New York’s main futures contract, light sweet crude for delivery in December, soared to a record intraday high of $92,22 per barrel.
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/ 23 October 2007
They say if you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere. But these days, it seems you haven’t really made it unless you have that most prized of status symbols — your very own page on Wikipedia. ”It’s something of an honour,” said journalist Howard Altman of being added to the world’s largest online encyclopedia.
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/ 19 October 2007
Oil prices have surpassed a barrel for the first time as the falling dollar drew new foreign investors and speculators to dollar-denominated energy futures. Light, sweet crude for November delivery hit ,02 in electronic trading late on Thursday evening before returning to about ,60.
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/ 18 October 2007
Standing around to chat on a busy Manhattan street can certainly create an inconvenience for other pedestrians. But is it illegal? A man arrested after a conversation with friends in bustling Times Square in New York City has asked the state’s highest court to dismiss the case.