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/ 19 December 2007
At least 64 journalists were killed in 2007, making it the deadliest year in more than a decade with Iraq the most dangerous place in the world to report, a United States media watchdog said on Monday. About seven in 10 of the deaths in 2007 were murders, while the rest were combat-related deaths and deaths in dangerous assignments.
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/ 18 December 2007
Social networking websites saw their ranks swell and values soar this year as everyone from moody teenagers and mellow music lovers to mate-seeking seniors joined online communities. Google’s freshly released <i>Zeitgeist 2007</i> reveals that seven out of the 10 hottest topics which triggered internet queries during the year involved social networking.
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/ 18 December 2007
Late-night TV comedians Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien said on Monday they will resume taping their shows on January 2, and cross picket lines if necessary, after nearly two months off the air in support of striking film and television writers. The decision by Leno and O’Brien to go back to work shows that solidarity has its limits.
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/ 15 December 2007
Google is working on a new internet encyclopedia that will consist of material submitted by people who want to be identified as experts and possibly profit from their knowledge. The concept, outlined in a posting on Google’s website, poses a potential challenge to the non-profit Wikipedia, which has drawn upon the collective wisdom of unpaid, anonymous contributors.
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/ 15 December 2007
Production on all but two of the last few scripted prime-time television shows shooting in Los Angeles ground to a halt on Friday as a crippling strike by Hollywood writers neared the end of its sixth week. The cost of the strike in terms of lost TV production spending in Southern California alone has reached about -million a week,
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/ 14 December 2007
Just a few blocks from Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, bustling with Christmas shoppers, other New Yorkers are out getting what they need, with one big difference — by not spending any money. For the city’s ”Freegans”, finding bell peppers, apples and bagels in the bags of trash that litter the city’s sidewalks is a way of life.
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/ 11 December 2007
A winter storm raging over the Midwestern United States on Tuesday reportedly left two dozen people dead and hundreds of thousands without power, as ice toppled trees and power lines and sent cars skidding off slick roads. Most of the fatalities were reported in Oklahoma, where authorities also said more than 600 000 people were without power.
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/ 11 December 2007
Nasa’s Voyager 2 spacecraft has found that our solar system is not round but is ”dented” by the local interstellar magnetic field of deep space, space experts said on Monday. The data was gathered by the craft on its 30-year journey into the edge of the solar system when it crossed into a sweeping region called the termination shock.
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/ 11 December 2007
Oscar-winning actress Charlize Theron has become the latest Hollywood celebrity to suffer a burglary following a break-in at the South African star’s home last week, police confirmed on Monday. The 32-year-old’s house, reportedly in the exclusive Hollywood Hills, was broken into between Thursday and Saturday.
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/ 11 December 2007
Human evolution has been moving at breakneck speed in the past several thousand years, far from plodding along as some scientists had thought. People today are genetically more different from people living 5 000 years ago than those humans were different from the Neanderthals who vanished 30 000 years ago.
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/ 11 December 2007
The guitar is slick, the bass and drums mesmerising, and if it weren’t for the lyrics, you would think the LeeVees were just another up-and-coming American rock band. But with lyrics that ponder what goes best with latkes — potato pancakes traditionally eaten at Hanukkah — or how to spell Hanukkah, the LeeVees position themselves squarely in the middle of a rising musical genre whose proponents call it new Jewish music.
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/ 9 December 2007
Nasa cancelled its second launch attempt of space shuttle Atlantis after a sensor in an emergency engine cutoff system failed again on Sunday, once more delaying Europe’s major contribution to the International Space Station. Atlantis and its seven astronauts are due to deliver Europe’s Columbus science laboratory module to the space station.
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/ 9 December 2007
Floyd Mayweather Jr retained his World Boxing Council welterweight title with a 10th round stoppage of Britain’s Ricky Hatton on Saturday, the American setting up the win with two knockdowns. Mayweather dropped Hatton to the canvas midway through the round before the referee stepped in to end the fight.
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/ 9 December 2007
The Golden Compass, a costly fantasy starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig, got off to a slow start at the North American box office and will likely fall short of opening-weekend expectations. New Line Cinema’s -million film sold an estimated ,8-million worth of tickets during its first day in theatres on Friday.
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/ 8 December 2007
A series of six black-and-white prints on display in an unassuming corner of the New York Public Library have sparked controversy on the airwaves and blogosphere quite out of keeping with the dark, marble-lined corridor in which they are hung. The prints show the mugshots of main members of the Bush administration.
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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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/ 8 December 2007
Negotiations between striking Hollywood writers and studios have collapsed, crushing expectations for a settlement of the costly walkout in its fifth week. The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers announced on Friday that the round of talks that started on Tuesday had broken down.
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/ 7 December 2007
The new head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) plans to slash as much as 15% of the organisation’s staff in its first significant job cuts, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s plans are aimed at reducing deficits and maintaining the relevance of the group.
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/ 7 December 2007
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon warned that the new 26 000-strong peacekeeping force for Darfur ”is at risk” unless it gets 24 critically needed helicopters and he appealed again to all countries for help. ”While helicopters alone cannot ensure the success of the mission, their absence may well doom it to failure,” Ban said in a letter.
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/ 6 December 2007
Nasa postponed the launch, scheduled for Thursday, of the United States space shuttle Atlantis after discovering a problem with a sensor in the spacecraft’s fuel tank, officials said. The US space agency planned to try again on Friday to launch Europe’s long-delayed Columbus science laboratory to the International Space Station.
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/ 6 December 2007
Floyd Mayweather doesn’t mind playing a bad guy if it helps make him a rich guy because growing up around criminals has pushed him to become boxing’s top star and an undefeated champion. The unbeaten 30-year-old American trash talker puts his World Boxing Council welterweight crown at stake on Saturday against undefeated English rival Ricky Hatton.
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/ 5 December 2007
Celebrity political endorsements do not get much bigger than Oprah Winfrey’s. But political experts say it is doubtful the popular United States talk-show host can sway votes to fellow Chicagoan and first-term Illinois Senator Barack Obama in the way she persuades viewers to turn books into instant bestsellers.
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/ 5 December 2007
Undefeated welterweights Ricky Hatton and Floyd Mayweather arrived in Las Vegas on Tuesday ahead of their weekend championship showdown, with the Englishman brushing off Mayweather’s trademark trash talk. United States veteran Mayweather, 38-0 with 24 knockouts, defends his World Boxing Council crown on Saturday against Hatton, 43-0 with 31 knockouts.
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/ 5 December 2007
Technology and entertainment topped Google’s searches in 2007, with the iPhone grabbing the number one slot on a list of the fastest-rising search terms in the United States. ”iPhone, of course, is a word very few people typed in a search box in 2006,” said Marissa Mayer of Google. ”It didn’t exist.”
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/ 5 December 2007
United States President George Bush is not known for changing his mind. Unmoved by the collective wisdom of the US intelligence community, he still insists that Iran is a threat, even if it did give up its nuclear weapons programme four years ago.
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/ 5 December 2007
The creators of the hit film Borat were sued again on Tuesday, this time by a driving instructor seen in the comedy admonishing the fake Kazakh reporter for yelling insults at other drivers. Michael Psenicska was duped into participating in the film after it was described to him as a ”documentary about the integration of foreign people into the American way of life”.
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/ 5 December 2007
For the Facebook generation, love now comes with a drop-down menu. With profiles on the Facebook social networking site almost de rigueur on campuses, students can define their relationship status with menu choices ranging from ”married” to that perennial favorite, ”It’s complicated.”
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/ 4 December 2007
The United States will slap travel and financial sanctions on about 40 more people with ties to Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, who has cracked down hard on dissent, a senior US official said on Monday. ”Mugabe’s tyranny needs to end,” said US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer.
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/ 3 December 2007
Japanese researchers pitted young chimps against human adults in two tests of short-term memory. Overall, the chimps won. That challenges the belief of many people, including many scientists, that ”humans are superior to chimpanzees in all cognitive functions”, said researcher Tetsuro Matsuzawa, of Kyoto University.
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/ 1 December 2007
Oil prices fell back below a barrel on Friday amid speculation that the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) will decide to increase its output at a meeting next week, analysts said. New York’s main contract, light sweet crude for January delivery, fell ,03 to close at ,71 per barrel, after earlier striking a one-month low of ,52.
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/ 1 December 2007
Daredevil Evel Knievel, who dodged death in spectacular motorcycle leaps and crashes in a life full of showmanship, died on November 30 at age 69, according to his lawyer and a message on his website. ”I just spoke with him last night [Friday]. He seemed to be in good spirits,” said Knievel’s lawyer, Richard Fee.
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/ 1 December 2007
Andy Roddick and James Blake gave the United States a formidable 2-0 lead over defending champions Russia on Friday, putting the Americans one point away from their first Davis Cup crown in 12 years. Roddick was untouchable on his serve in beating Dmitry Tursunov 6-4, 6-4, 6-2, while Blake turned in a gutsy performance.