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/ 10 October 2007
Shoddy construction work, safety lapses, kickbacks, internal disputes and ballooning costs — the new United States embassy complex in Baghdad is mired in a deluge of problems, with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on the frontline of fire from lawmakers.
United States sprinter Marion Jones handed over her five medals from the 2000 Olympic Games to an official of the United States Anti-Doping Agency (Usada) on Monday. Once the world’s fastest woman, Jones was hailed as the queen of the Sydney Games, where she won three gold medals, including the 100m, as well as two bronze medals.
Worsening violence in Darfur risks spreading the conflict further in Sudan and shows the need for advanced equipment a planned United Nations peacekeeping force does not yet have. UN peacekeeping chief Jean-Marie Guehenno said the situation had deteriorated with an attack late last month by armed men on an African Union base.
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.
Women who want to become pregnant, are pregnant or breast-feeding should eat at least 12 ounces of fatty fish such as tuna every week to help themselves and their babies. Fish including mackerel, sardines, light tuna and salmon are rich in omega-3 fatty acids — components of fat known to help brain development.
Pakistan’s Foreign Secretary Riaz Muhammad Khan on Wednesday urged the United States to be more patient as his country fights extremists in tribal areas bordering Afghanistan. Khan acknowledged his country suffered an ”image problem” but said there needed to be a greater understanding of the enormous challenges.
Yahoo! has retooled its online search engine to make it more helpful and engaging, joining an industrywide wave of improvements that so far haven’t dented Google’s dominance. It regards the upgrade announced on Tuesday as the most significant change to its search engine since it reclaimed control of the underlying technology.
With a series of small beeps from a spiky globe 50 years ago, the world shrank and humanity’s view of Earth and the cosmos expanded. Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, was launched by the Soviets and circled the globe on October 4 1957. The Space Age was born. And what followed were changes to everyday life that people now take for granted.
In spite of its global popularity, internet telephony (voice-over-internet protocol, or VoIP), which is almost free for users, has not become a gold mine for its pioneers such as Skype and Vonage. Popular online auction firm eBay, which bought Skype two years ago for ,6-billion, affirmed that message in a costly way on Monday.
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/ 29 September 2007
Microsoft is to extend the availability of its Windows XP operating system, the company announced on Friday. Industry analysts said that the move reflected hesitancy by buyers to adopt XP’s replacement, Windows Vista, especially in the business community.
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/ 29 September 2007
Rwanda joined other countries on Friday in appealing for a global moratorium on executions, saying that if its government could abolish the death penalty while perpetrators of the 1994 genocide still await sentences, no country should use it. About 500 000 people, mostly ethnic Tutsis, were massacred in 100 days of frenzied killing led by radical Hutus.
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/ 28 September 2007
United States President George Bush on Friday called for a ”strong and transparent” way for nations to measure progress on fighting climate change, but said each country should set its own approach. In a speech to a US-sponsored conference of major emitting countries, Bush also called for the creation of a global fund to promote clean technology.
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/ 28 September 2007
Israel and the Palestinians could sign a peace deal within six months of an international peace conference scheduled for November, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Friday. ”The meeting in November should define the principles settling the questions over the final status [of the Palestinian territories],” Abbas said.
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/ 27 September 2007
The United States-sponsored meeting of major emitting countries is aimed at supporting and accelerating the United Nations process on climate change, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice insisted on Thursday. Sceptics have expressed concern that the climate meeting might be an attempt to circumvent the UN process.
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/ 27 September 2007
Social networking site Facebook, which signs up more than a million new fans every month, has changed tack and begun to list publicly members’ profiles on search engines such as Google and Yahoo!. It is, in fact, aiming to get in early in the race to build a global — and potentially lucrative — online people directory.
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/ 26 September 2007
South Africa’s Nobel Peace Prize-winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu expressed concern about the situation in Burma on Wednesday, describing the country’s pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi as his only pin-up. ”I think we ought to celebrate the incredible courage of our sisters and brothers in Burma,” he said.
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/ 26 September 2007
World governments vowed on Wednesday to hold Burma’s military rulers to account for a bloody crackdown on mass street protests, as the United Nations Security Council prepared to meet in emergency session and European Union officials began drawing up new sanctions.
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/ 26 September 2007
South African Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu said on Tuesday he was ”devastated” by the human rights abuses of President Robert Mugabe’s government in Zimbabwe. Tutu said he struggles to understand how Mugabe changed so drastically after steering the country to independence in 1980.
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/ 26 September 2007
The head of African miner Randgold Resources on Tuesday said net profit in its third and fourth quarters should be in line with the first-quarter level, citing higher bullion prices. Randgold, whose gold mines are mostly based in West Africa, posted first-quarter net profit of ,7-million.
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/ 25 September 2007
Microsoft is negotiating to buy a stake in social networking site Facebook that could value the company at -billion or more, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The report said that Microsoft is keen to buy a 5% stake in the company, but is facing competition from Google.
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/ 25 September 2007
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Clint Eastwood may direct an upcoming Hollywood film based on former South African president Nelson Mandela and his appearance at the 1995 Rugby World Cup final, United States media reported on Tuesday. The drama will see Morgan Freeman portray Mandela, entertainment journal Daily Variety reported.
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/ 25 September 2007
Nobel Peace laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu said on Monday that the United States government must be more open to discussions with Iran if it wants peace between the nations. Tutu criticised the George Bush’s administration for refusing to engage in more negotiations with Iranian officials.
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/ 25 September 2007
Microsoft began its midnight sales of Halo 3, the acclaimed alien shooter game that it hopes will widen its lead over Sony in the battle for industry dominance. Microsoft is backing the game with a marketing blitz that includes celebrity-studded sales events at about 10 000 retailers across the United States.
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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
Steve Flesch shot a 1-over 73 on Sunday and beat Michael Allen by two shots to win the inaugural Turning Stone Resort Championship, the left-hander’s second PGA Tour victory in two months. Flesch had an 18-under 270 total and won ,08-million to boost his earnings for 2007 to ,2-million.
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/ 24 September 2007
The United States Episcopal Church is in the middle of a debate that could end with its departure from the Worldwide Anglican Communion over disagreements about gay clergy and same-sex unions. The conflict was prompted when the US church consecrated Gene Robinson as the first bishop in an openly gay relationship.
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/ 23 September 2007
Alice Ghostley, the Tony Award-winning actress best known on television for playing Esmeralda on Bewitched and Bernice on Designing Women, has died. She was 81. Ghostley died on September 21 at her home in Studio City after a long battle with colon cancer and a series of strokes.
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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
Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani startled a United States gun-lobby audience on Friday when he interrupted his speech to take a phone call from his wife — and it didn’t seem to be an emergency. ”Hello, dear. I’m talking to the members of the NRA right now. Would you like to say hello?” he chirped.
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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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/ 21 September 2007
Born 10 years ago, the Google internet search engine has grown into the electronic centre of human knowledge by indexing billions of web pages as well as images, books and videos. On September 15 1997, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two 24-year-old Stanford University students, registered the domain name of ”google.com”.