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/ 5 December 2006
Painter Roy Newell, one of the original American abstract expressionists and a favourite of artist Willem de Kooning, died of cancer in November in Manhattan, his wife said. He was 92. Newell, a Manhattan native, was renowned as a perfectionist who would spend decades creating a single painting.
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/ 5 December 2006
Libya detained an outspoken critic of the country’s leader Moammar Gadaffi a month ago and he has not been heard from since, United States-based Human Rights Watch said on Monday. Libya’s internal security agency detained Idrees Mohamed Boufayed, a doctor who had lived in exile in Switzerland for the past 16 years, in Tripoli on November 5.
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/ 4 December 2006
The Wall Street Journal, whose wide pages and text-rich look have long been an icon of the United States newspaper business, is about to undergo several changes that include cutting 7,6cm off its width. Along with the size reduction, which is equivalent to about one of its columns, the newspaper will add more colour and graphical elements, including greater use of photographs.
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/ 1 December 2006
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has said it will spend all its assets within 50 years of them both dying, as the trustees want to focus the foundation’s work in the 21st century. The foundation has also announced that it will split its internal structure in two, an asset trust and a programme foundation.
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/ 14 November 2006
Former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani, a Republican who guided his city through the chaos of the September 11 attacks, has taken a key step towards a possible 2008 United States presidential run. Giuliani has filed papers in New York state to set up a committee to explore a possible candidacy, although an aide said Monday he has not made up his mind.
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/ 14 November 2006
Antibodies that are active against HIV proteins may provide a successful strategy against infection, investigators report. In test tube experiments, an antibody that attacks the outer HIV envelope glycoprotein 41, which was labeled with a radioactive isotope so its movement could be detected, killed white blood cells infected with HIV.
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/ 14 November 2006
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan intends to propose a ”hybrid” African Union-UN force for Darfur in talks with Sudanese officials and has invited major powers to take part. Sudan has been adamantly opposed to a UN force so the UN is considering alternatives to get a larger and better-funded peacekeeping operation acceptable to Khartoum.
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/ 13 November 2006
While teaching American humour to a gregarious and absurdly out-of-touch foreign journalist, Pat Haggerty realised something was off — who was this guy? Haggerty, a public-speaking coach from Washington, DC, is one of the unwitting co-stars of the surprise hit movie Borat.
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/ 13 November 2006
The crowd roared as blue lights flickered, and images of skulls and three-eyed creatures were superimposed behind the Swedish electronica music duo The Knife.
The enigmatic brother-and-sister band wooed a packed audience at New York’s Webster Hall with their angular, often foreboding sound and graphics projected on a translucent screen that covered the stage.
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/ 13 November 2006
The real champion? Not yet. But close. Wladimir Klitschko’s seventh-round knockout of Calvin Brock on Saturday made for an impressive first defence of the IBF title he took from Chris Byrd in April. Now Klitschko has his sights on the other three heavyweight champions: Shannon Briggs, Nicolay Valuev and Oleg Maskaev.
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/ 10 November 2006
Ur dumped, Kevin Federline — and you are now part of a growing club of spurned lovers who have been ditched by SMS. A video of Britney Spears’ soon-to-be ex-husband apparently getting a SMS informing him that the pop princess had filed for divorce became the most viewed item on YouTube on Thursday, with more than one million hits.
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/ 6 November 2006
Leonid Hambro, a concert pianist who served as Victor Borge’s comedic sidekick during a decade-long collaboration and was also known for his ability to commit to memory a huge repertoire, has died. He was 86. Hambro died at his Manhattan home on October 23 of complications from a fall, his wife, Barbara Hambro, said.
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/ 6 November 2006
William Styron, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist whose explorations of the darkest corners of the human mind and experience were charged by his own near-suicidal demons, died on November 1 in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. He was 81. Styron’s daughter, Alexandra, said the author died of pneumonia.
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/ 6 November 2006
Brazil’s Marilson Gomes dos Santos won his New York Marathon debut on Sunday, becoming the first South American to take the race, while Latvia’s Jelena Prokopcuka captured her second consecutive women’s crown. South Africa’s Hendrick Ramaala finished ninth.
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/ 4 November 2006
A detective suspended after testing positive for drugs says his wife served him meatballs spiked with marijuana because she wanted to keep him out of harm’s way by forcing him into retirement. An administrative judge believed him, and recommended this week that Anthony Chiofalo be reinstated.
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/ 30 October 2006
Leading lawyers have questioned the United States’s appetite for condemning white-collar fraudsters to decades behind bars, in a debate ignited by the sentencing of Enron’s former CE Jeffrey Skilling. Skilling was due to appear before a judge in Houston to hear his fate.
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/ 28 October 2006
The United Nations is considering a monitoring mission or peacekeeping force in Chad where the spillover from violence in Sudan’s Darfur region has resulted in more than 200 000 refugees. Jean-Marie Guehenno, the head of UN peacekeeping, told the UN Security Council on Friday he was sending a mission to Chad and the Central African Republic.
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/ 28 October 2006
IPod owners boast that they can take their music collection with them everywhere they go, but some forget what’s lurking in the attic — their records. Albums are easy to neglect. They are not digital like music files and compact discs, and they’re about as portable as a box of rocks.
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/ 26 October 2006
Investment bank Morgan Stanley said on Thursday it planned to expand its carbon trading business through a -billion investment that includes projects related to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The move marks a significant expansion of the bank’s existing carbon trading activities that it launched in 2004 within its commodities division.
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/ 24 October 2006
A United Nations draft resolution, circulated on Monday, would give the prime minister of the Côte d’Ivoire full military and civilian authority to run the country for another year pending new elections. The UN Security Council document, drawn up by France, says that Prime Minister Charles Konan Banny would be empowered to ”take all necessary decisions”.
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/ 15 October 2006
The United Nations Security Council voted unanimously on Saturday to impose financial and weapons sanctions on North Korea for its claimed nuclear test in a resolution that Pyongyang immediately rejected. The US-drafted resolution said the reclusive communist state’s action was a ”clear threat to international peace and security”.
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/ 14 October 2006
Belgium, Italy and South Africa will on Monday be selected as non-permanent members of the United Nations Security Council for the 2007/08 period, a spokesperson said on Friday. The three countries will be elected by secret ballot by the 192-member General Assembly to succeed Denmark and Greece and Tanzania respectively.
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/ 14 October 2006
The United Nations Security Council expects to impose arms and financial sanctions on North Korea on Saturday for its reported nuclear weapons test, with United States intelligence pointing to confirmation that it took place. In Washington, a preliminary US intelligence analysis has shown radioactivity in air samples collected near a suspected North Korean nuclear test site.
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/ 14 October 2006
The next secretary general of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon of South Korea, pledged on Friday to be a decisive leader and cautioned those who call him low-key not to mistake him for a pushover. ”I may look low-key or [be] soft-spoken but that does not mean that I lack leadership or commitment,” Ban told Reuters.
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/ 13 October 2006
Women in post-conflict societies should play a bigger role in revitalising their countries, researchers of a new study said. Research conducted in the aftermath of three recent conflicts analysed the role of women in peace processes as well as the security of women in South Africa, Northern Ireland and Lebanon.
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/ 11 October 2006
US authorities scrambled fighter jets above US cities on Wednesday as a precaution after a small plane crashed into an apartment building in New York, a senior commander said. Admiral Tim Keating, commander of the US Northern Command, would not say how many cities were under air cover but insisted there was no sign of terrorism in the accident on Manhattan’s post Upper East Side.
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/ 11 October 2006
A small aircraft crashed into a high-rise building in New York City on Wednesday, killing at least two people and prompting US authorities to scramble fighter jets as a precaution. Officials emphasised the crash was not an act of terrorism but an accident. The accident claimed the life of American baseball player Cory Lidle, who was thought to be piloting the plane.
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/ 11 October 2006
Tiger Woods has won six United States PGA Tour events in a row and is producing some of the best golf of his career, but coach Hank Haney says there is still room for improvement. Haney, who helped guide Woods through a swing change that has revitalised his game, said the world number one has been hitting his irons so accurately that his short game has been neglected.
The first auction of official Star Trek memorabilia hit warp speed on Saturday when a determined bidder paid 000 for a model of the legendary science fiction franchise’s starship Enterprise, helping drive the total for the three-day sale above -million.
Sudan on Friday pressed efforts to mend fences with the United Nations, denying suggestions that it had tried to ”intimidate” countries planning to contribute troops to a proposed UN force for war-torn Darfur. On Thursday the Security Council held a special meeting to discuss a Sudanese letter sent to African and Arab countries on Tuesday warning them that providing troops for the UN force would be seen by Khartoum as a ”hostile act”.
Harrah’s Entertainment, the world’s biggest casino operator, on Monday said it had received a -billion buyout offer from private equity firms Apollo Management and Texas Pacific Group. The proposed deal, which would rank as the fifth-largest leveraged buyout on record, signals new interest in the gambling sector for heavily funded private equity groups.
Many men who pay for sex are already in relationships, the findings of a small United Kingdom study show. The study ”raises awareness of the risks taken by men who pay for sex, and the risks they are also placing on their partners,” co-author Dr Tamsin Groom, a specialist registrar in sexual and reproductive health.