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/ 9 November 2006
Hamstrung by the collapse of his Republican majority in Congress, President George Bush faced the humbling task on Thursday of reaching across party lines to Democrats swept to power by voter anger over his Iraq policy. Bush’s fence-mending with Democratic leaders follow word that they have won enough seats to take control of the United States Senate.
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/ 8 November 2006
United States Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld resigned on Wednesday, paying the price for the Democrat surge to power in Congress driven by a wave of public anger over the Iraq war. President George Bush announced the veteran power broker’s departure, sending shockwaves though Washington.
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/ 8 November 2006
A Democratic takeover of the United States Senate rested on Wednesday on a few thousand votes as two races were too close to call and risked throwing an American election once again into extra time. Senate races in Montana and Virginia were agonisingly tight but appeared to be trending towards the Democrats.
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/ 8 November 2006
Nancy Pelosi, a hate figure for the Republican right, is poised to become the first woman speaker in United States Congressional history after the Democrats election triumph. The pro-abortion, anti-war Pelosi’s elevation to the number three position in the US Constitution is all but certain after the Democrats seized control of the House of Representatives for the first time since 1994.
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/ 7 November 2006
Democrats hoped to sweep Republicans out of power in the United States Congress on Tuesday after a bruising campaign dominated by discontent with the Iraq war and doubts about President George Bush’s leadership. Democrats are on course to recapture control of the US House of Representatives for the first time since 1994, polls showed.
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/ 7 November 2006
Democrats looked to sweep Republicans out of power in the United States Congress on Tuesday after a bruising campaign fed by public worries about the country’s future, discontent with the Iraq war and doubts about President George Bush’s leadership.
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/ 7 November 2006
The head of Boeing’s 787 programme said on Monday the company is confident it can lighten the hot-selling plane by two-and-a-half tonnes — enough to fulfill promises that it will be much more fuel efficient than any similar commercial jet flying today.
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/ 7 November 2006
Illustrations in picture books go beyond entertaining children and teach them how to navigate the world, according to a study published by the American Psychological Association on Sunday. Scientists tested 132 children younger than 30 months old to see if they could mimic actions depicted in picture books.
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/ 7 November 2006
As the intrepid Kazakhstan journalist Borat Sagdiyev might say, Borat make glorious entrance at Hollywood office of movies. Indeed, Borat — the acclaimed comedy tracing the Jew-fearing title character’s road trip across the United States — stunned observers by opening at number one on Sunday with ticket sales of ,4-million.
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/ 6 November 2006
Microsoft said on Monday it has completed the software code for its Office 2007 suite and will begin to offer the world’s most popular package of desktop software to corporate customers on November 30. The new Windows Vista operating system and 2007 Exchange e-mail server will also then be made available to business customers.
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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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/ 3 November 2006
United States officials say they have created their own version of the Wikipedia online encyclopedia for intelligence agents, in a bid to encourage US spy agencies to share information and transcend bureaucratic rivalries. Intellipedia allows analysts and officials from a range of agencies to add and edit content on intelligence topics in a collaborative manner through a classified internal web.
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/ 2 November 2006
The United States warned its citizens on Thursday that Kenya and Ethiopia could become targets of suicide attacks by ”extremist elements” from Somalia, where Islamists control the capital and other key areas. ”These threats specifically mention the execution of suicide explosions in prominent landmarks within Kenya and Ethiopia,” said a message issued to US citizens.
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/ 2 November 2006
United States President George Bush on Wednesday renewed US economic sanctions on Sudan for one year and left open the door to imposing new ones linked to the violence in Darfur. Washington "is prepared to pursue the designation of additional individuals that continue to commit violence and impede the peace process in Darfur", he said.
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/ 1 November 2006
A Maine attorney who released information in 2000 about President George Bush’s drunken driving conviction was arrested on Tuesday after he dressed up as al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and waved a fake gun at traffic. Police in South Portland, Maine, arrested Thomas Connolly (49) of Scarborough, Maine, and charged him with criminal threatening.
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/ 1 November 2006
The music publishing industry reached a tentative deal with operators of the Kazaa file-sharing network over claims of copyright infringement, an industry group said. Publishers pursuing a class-action suit against Kazaa informed a United States District Court on Monday that the peer-to-peer network had agreed to pay ”a substantial sum”.
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/ 1 November 2006
A federal appeals court blocked a landmark judgement against the tobacco industry, allowing the companies to continue selling ”light” and ”low tar” cigarettes until their appeals can be reviewed. The decision by the United States Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday also allows the companies to continue for now the advertising campaigns that a federal judge in August ruled were misleading.
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/ 31 October 2006
Nasa chief Michael Griffin is expected to announce on Tuesday whether there will be a final space shuttle mission to keep the aging Hubble Space Telescope in orbit an additional five years. Griffin is expected to announce his decision at 3pm GMT, after meeting on Friday with top National Aeronautics and Space Administration officials to discuss the issue.
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/ 31 October 2006
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan says persistent conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea represents a ”classic example of the tragedy” of Africa and warned that world attention is needed to keep another war from erupting between the Horn of Africa neighbours.
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/ 28 October 2006
Two robbery suspects had a rough day on Friday trying to elude police during the second round of the PGA Chrysler Championship. After allegedly breaking into a nearby home, the two males, described by police as ”juveniles,” fled onto the Innisbrook Resort golf course which is hosting the PGA Tour.
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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
No one was buying hell on Friday — or at least its red-hot web address. Hell.com was among hundreds of internet domain names up for auction in Hollywood, Florida, by domain asset management provider Moniker.com, a unit of marketing services firm Seevast.
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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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/ 27 October 2006
World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz bumped and wriggled to an African beat on Thursday, showing a lighter public side as he danced with South African singer Yvonne Chaka Chaka in a campaign against malaria. Wolfowitz joined Chaka Chaka in the atrium of the bank as their audience of African ambassadors, private sector officials, and World Bank and congressional staff cheered and clapped.
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/ 26 October 2006
An unmanned Delta rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral air force station in Florida on Wednesday carrying a pair of solar probes to track potentially disruptive solar storms. The Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory, or Stereo, is designed to take three-dimensional pictures of the solar outbursts so scientists can pinpoint where the storms are heading.
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/ 26 October 2006
A long-term moderate exercise programme can reduce the risk of colds among older women, United States researchers said on Thursday. Researchers from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre found that post-menopausal women who worked out regularly had about half the risk of colds as those who did not exercise.
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/ 26 October 2006
United States President George Bush said on Wednesday American patience over Iraq had its limits but pledged not to put unbearable pressure on the country’s leaders, after a protest by Iraq’s prime minister. Bush sought to explain his Iraq policies to Americans and smooth over new frictions with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
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/ 25 October 2006
Mozilla on Tuesday released a new version of its Firefox web browser that has gained popularity as a free alternative to Microsoft’s ubiquitous Internet Explorer software. In the two years since its release by the non-profit Mozilla Foundation, the Firefox browser has won millions of devotees worldwide.
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/ 25 October 2006
Google announced this week that bloggers and website operators are free to customise its powerful search engine and put it on their internet pages complete with money-making ads. Google Custom Search Engine provides online tools to tailor query boxes for websites or blogs in a guided step-by-step process.