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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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/ 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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/ 16 December 2007
It is a country where the president has asked people to stop shaking hands, where MPs have called for an end to public gatherings, market vendors wear gloves and Roman Catholic priests no longer give the communion wafers and wine by hand. Uganda is gripped by terror over a new strain of one of the world’s most deadly diseases.
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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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/ 1 December 2007
The man who devised the Bush administration’s Iraq troop surge has urged the United States to consider sending elite troops to Pakistan to seize its nuclear weapons if the country descends into chaos. In a series of scenarios drawn up for Pakistan, Frederick Kagan has called for the White House to consider various options for an unstable Pakistan.
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/ 24 November 2007
New York City, once widely feared for its mean streets scarred by random violence, is on course for its lowest murder rate in four decades with this year’s total expected to be below 500. A steady decline in the Big Apple’s violent-crime rate has left the city basking in a new-found glow of safety.
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/ 22 November 2007
A suicide car bomber blasted a police checkpoint outside the courthouse in Ramadi on Wednesday, killing up to six people and wounding as many as 22 in the first such attack in months in the former Sunni insurgent stronghold.
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/ 19 November 2007
Pakistan’s Supreme Court on Monday rubber-stamped President Pervez Musharraf’s contested re-election victory in October, after he purged the court of hostile judges. ”Five petitions have been dismissed. One is pending and it will be heard on Thursday,” said the Attorney General Malik Qayyum.
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/ 14 November 2007
Former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto is trying to forge an alliance with Islamists and other opposition parties to launch a campaign to force military president Pervez Musharraf from power. Musharraf plunged the nuclear-armed country into crisis on November 3 when he declared emergency rule.
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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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/ 10 November 2007
South African diplomats have expressed shock at strong United States government criticism in the New York Times this week of the country’s stance over a United Nations resolution, introduced by the US, that condemns rape by governments and military formations.
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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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/ 30 October 2007
United States State Department investigators looking into the shooting deaths of 17 Iraqis in Baghdad last month offered immunity deals to Blackwater security guards. The investigators from the agency’s investigative arm did not, however, have the authority to offer such immunity grants.
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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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/ 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.
President George Bush said on Friday that the United States does not use torture during interrogations, amid renewed debate about his administration’s methods in the war on terror. ”This government does not torture people. We stick to US law and our international obligations,” Bush said.
Fearing that it will lose out financially, much of the book industry is resisting internet pioneers’ vision of putting the world’s entire store of published information online. Some European libraries have portrayed the bid to digitise 500 years of books and newspapers as an imperialist plot.
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/ 18 September 2007
The New York Times said on Monday it will end its paid TimesSelect web service and make most of its website available for free in the hopes of attracting more readers and higher advertising revenue. TimesSelect will shut down on Wednesday, two years after the Times launched it, which charges subscribers ,95 a month or ,95 a year.
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/ 16 September 2007
United States President George Bush on Sunday faced a new clash with congressional Democrats over the unpopular war in Iraq as Senate Democrats reportedly reached a deal that would allow soldiers to spend more time at home. ”If we were to be driven out of Iraq, extremists of all strains would be emboldened,” Bush said on Saturday.
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/ 14 September 2007
Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin park their jet just a stone’s throw from their offices, paying $1,3-million a year for rights at a federally maintained airfield, the <i>New York Times</i> reported Thursday. Why put up with bothersome local traffic when you can shell out a princely sum for take-off and landing rights just a few minutes from your office?
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/ 10 September 2007
The Bush administration’s most senior advisers on Iraq, the commander of US forces, General David Petraeus, and the ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, will launch a new drive today to defer any exit of troops until April 2008 amid growing doubts about their credibility in Congress and among the public.
Why have not very many people heard of Nanda Soobben? Niren Tolsi reports.
Khaled Hosseini’s highly anticipated second novel follows the trials and triumphs of two Afghan women, writes Declan Walsh