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/ 26 September 2007
Massive resource transfers to poor countries from rich countries are needed if the world wants to attain its Millennium Developmental Goals, South African President Thabo Mbeki told the 62nd session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York late on Tuesday.
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/ 26 September 2007
Burma security forces sealed off Yangon’s Shwedagon Pagoda on Wednesday, fired tear gas and arrested up to 80 monks trying to get into the shrine, cracking down on the biggest anti-junta protests in nearly 20 years. Witnesses said some of the deeply revered Buddhist clergy were beaten by riot police taking them away from the shrine.
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/ 26 September 2007
Troops and riot police took up positions outside at least six big activist monasteries in Yangon on Wednesday as Burma’s junta tried to prevent monks leading new protest marches against military rule. There was no immediate word from the monks on whether they would risk their first major confrontation with the junta.
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/ 25 September 2007
A suicide car bomber struck the police headquarters in Basra on Tuesday, killing at least three officers and wounding 20 people amid fears over the southern city’s deteriorating security situation. In Baghdad, meanwhile, at least seven people were killed — six in a car bombing on a shopping street.
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/ 25 September 2007
Ethiopia said on Tuesday it may terminate the pact ending its border war with Eritrea, accusing its smaller neighbour of breaching the deal on several fronts including coordinating ”terrorist activity”. Relations between the two nations are at their lowest since a 1998 to 2000 border war killed 70 000 people.
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/ 25 September 2007
President George Bush announced new United States sanctions against Burma on Tuesday as world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly focused on rising protests against military rule in the South-East Asian state. Bush urged all nations to ”help the Burmese people reclaim their freedom”.
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/ 25 September 2007
Darfur rebel leader Khalil Ibrahim said on Tuesday he will carry on fighting during upcoming peace talks until a final settlement is reached to end the conflict in western Sudan. Ibrahim also said he is dismissing his deputy, accusing him of secret meetings with the government to undermine the movement.
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/ 25 September 2007
President Thabo Mbeki is about to act against police National Commissioner Jackie Selebi, the Cape Argus reported on Tuesday. An inquiry into claims that Selebi had links with crime syndicates would be Mbeki’s second major step following the suspension of National Prosecuting Authority head Vusi Pikoli, the newspaper said.
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/ 25 September 2007
Fresh rainfalls and slow relief have deepened the humanitarian crisis caused by record floods in Africa that have affected more than 1,5-million people and killed at least 300, aid agencies warned on Tuesday. The worst floods in three decades have now affected 22 countries and displaced hundreds of thousands.
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/ 25 September 2007
Six civilians were killed when Ugandan soldiers opened fire on a Congolese passenger boat on Lake Albert on Monday, in the latest border flare up between the Great Lakes neighbours. In a conflicting version of the shooting incident, Uganda’s military reported two soldiers killed, one from each country.
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/ 25 September 2007
Climate change is spurring a ”worldwide economic and industrial restructuring” as more and more of the world’s largest companies seek to confront global warming, an investor survey said on Monday. Even so, some big firms were still doing far too little to identify risks and opportunities from climate change.
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/ 25 September 2007
Hundreds of monks marched towards central Yangon on Tuesday in defiance of a threat by Burma’s ruling generals to send soldiers in to end the biggest anti-junta protests in 20 years. About 2Â 000 monks and ordinary people marched out of the Shwedagon Pagoda, the former Burma’s holiest shrine and the symbolic heart of a growing campaign against 45 years of unbroken military rule.
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/ 25 September 2007
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad clashed with an United States university president who called him a ”petty and cruel dictator” at a forum on Monday where Ahmadinejad criticised Israel and the US and said Iran was a peaceful nation. Ahmadinejad also said in an appearance at Columbia University that Iran’s nuclear programme was purely peaceful.
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/ 25 September 2007
President George Bush is set to announce new United States sanctions against Burma over human rights as the annual United Nations General Assembly gathering of world leaders gets under way on Tuesday. Bush will advocate supporting groups in Burma that are trying to advance freedom and announce new sanctions directed at key members of the military rulers.
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/ 24 September 2007
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) soldiers and troops loyal to a renegade general broke an 18-day truce on Monday in the restive east of the country, officials said. ”We are in a situation of active defence,” Congolese armed forces second-in-command Colonel Delphin Kahimbi said in Nord-Kivu.
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/ 24 September 2007
Negotiations on an effective climate regime must be concluded by 2009, Environmental Affairs and Tourism Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk told a high-level meeting on climate change at the United Nations in New York on Monday. The exceptional one-day summit gathers about 150 nations.
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/ 24 September 2007
President Thabo Mbeki has suspended Vusi Pikoli, the National Director of Public Prosecutions, it was announced on Monday. Mokotedi Mpshe was named as acting director. The move to suspend Pikoli — met with shock and disbelief by opposition political parties — comes amid a bitter turf war between the police and the Scorpions that has escalated to Cabinet level.
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/ 24 September 2007
Only -million out of a -million appeal has come in to help growing numbers of victims of Sudan’s worst floods in living memory, the United Nations said on Monday. Throughout Sudan, heavy rains have sparked flash floods and rivers have burst their banks, sweeping away tens of thousands of homes.
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/ 24 September 2007
Former Mozambican president Joachim Chissano says Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe should attend the European Union-Africa summit to exchange views on issues in his country. ”I think it will be an opportunity for the EU to discuss with President Mugabe and exchange views,” Chissano was quoted as saying by the government mouthpiece Herald newspaper.
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/ 24 September 2007
The Iraqi Prime Minister, Nuri al-Maliki, showed an unexpected streak of stubbornness on Sunday in his stand-off with the United States over the Blackwater shootings, insisting that action had to be taken against the private security firm. Al-Maliki said Blackwater posed ”a serious challenge to the sovereignty of Iraq and cannot be accepted”.
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/ 24 September 2007
An explosion killed two people and injured 11 when it tore through shops early on Monday in the capital of Serbia’s breakaway Kosovo province. The explosion scattered glass and debris from a dozen shops on Pristina’s Bill Clinton Boulevard. Part of a building collapsed.
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/ 24 September 2007
Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said on Sunday there was ”no war in the offing” between his country and the United States. He told the CBS programme 60 Minutes: ”It’s wrong to think that Iran and the US are walking toward war. Who says so? Why should we go to war?”
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/ 23 September 2007
The United Nations’s new envoy to Somalia, Ahmedou Ould Abdallah, held his first talks in Mogadishu on Saturday with the embattled transitional government’s top leaders, the UN said. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s special representative discussed the results of a recent national reconciliation congress.
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/ 23 September 2007
The victims of flooding in northern Ghana are still crying out for help, three weeks after the water started rising, sweeping away their crops and homes. The torrential rains and floods that have ravaged sub-Saharan Africa from the Atlantic coast to the Indian Ocean are believed to be the worst in three decades.
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/ 23 September 2007
”Mugabe stands very tall and black,” boasted Herald columnist Nathaniel Manheru in Zimbabwe on Saturday. ”Brown stands white and colonial.” It was a reminder of the intensity of the diplomatic row that has erupted over British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s decision to boycott a Europe-Africa summit if Mugabe shows up.
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/ 23 September 2007
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki met ministers from world powers and neighbouring countries on Saturday after telling the United Nations secretary general he could guarantee security for a broader UN role in Iraq. Ministers from Iraq, its neighbours and world powers met at UN headquarters.
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/ 22 September 2007
A small amount of extra peacekeeping troops for Sudan’s troubled Darfur region could be in place by October, officials said on Friday after a high-level meeting on Darfur at the United Nations. Nigeria and Rwanda are considering sending ”a few battalions” to the region next month, according to Britain’s secretary of state for Africa.
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/ 22 September 2007
Aid agencies have appealed for millions of dollars to help more than one million Africans affected by deadly floods that have swept across the continent. The floods have killed at least 200 people and displaced hundreds of thousands in 17 countries since the summer, including Burkina Faso, Ghana, Togo, Uganda and Kenya.
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/ 21 September 2007
Peacekeeping missions in Africa are hampered by difficulties in generating forces and a shortage of funding, a senior United Nations official said on Friday. Nick Seymour, senior political officer with the UN’s peacekeeping department, said getting enough troops to conflict zones will always be a challenge.
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/ 21 September 2007
Gordon Brown or Robert Mugabe? One won’t go to a summit between Europe and Africa in December, but the Portuguese hosts say the potential rewards of closer ties between the two continents outweigh the antagonism between the leaders of Britain and Zimbabwe.
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/ 21 September 2007
Developed countries are not living up to the promise to help alleviate poverty, hunger and under-development elsewhere, President Thabo Mbeki said on Friday. For example, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) estimates that only 13 countries are likely to halve extreme poverty and hunger by 2015.
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/ 21 September 2007
At least 3 000 people led by Buddhist monks marched along flooded streets in Yangon on Friday, piling pressure on Burma’s ruling junta in the most sustained challenge to its rule in nearly 20 years. About 1 500 cinnamon-robed monks marched barefoot through the city on Friday, attracting an equal number of followers.