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/ 24 October 2006
Long lines and long counts threaten to mar next month’s United States congressional elections as millions of Americans put new voting machines and rules to the test, election officials and experts say. The result could be delays in knowing whether Democrats capture one or both houses of the US Congress.
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/ 24 October 2006
A United Nations draft resolution, circulated on Monday, would give the prime minister of the Côte d’Ivoire full military and civilian authority to run the country for another year pending new elections. The UN Security Council document, drawn up by France, says that Prime Minister Charles Konan Banny would be empowered to ”take all necessary decisions”.
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/ 24 October 2006
Talk about a hard sell: this movie stars unknown actors speaking an obscure language and is directed by a man whose off-screen behavior has outraged many. Figuring out a way to market Mel Gibson’s latest movie, Apocalypto, has many experts scratching their heads.
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/ 23 October 2006
IBM filed two lawsuits against Amazon.com on Monday, claiming key aspects of the internet retailer’s websites violate patents held by Big Blue. Amazon is accused of infringing on five IBM patents, including technologies that govern how the site handles customer recommendations, advertising and data storage.
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/ 23 October 2006
The world’s most popular web browser has a new lease on life. With the recent release of the final version of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 7 (IE7), internet users everywhere will begin testing out this new window to the web, available for free from Microsoft’s IE7 download site.
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/ 22 October 2006
An Islamic scholar from South Africa has been denied entry into the United States, prompting questions from Muslims in the San Francisco Bay area who had invited him to participate in activities marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan. Azmi was questioned for hours before being denied entry.
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/ 22 October 2006
Amid a surge in United States soldier deaths and under increasing pressure to change course in Iraq, President George Bush has met top military commanders to mull possible adjustments to US strategy, the White House said. The meeting came as the country experiences one of the deadliest months for US troops in Iraq since 2003.
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/ 21 October 2006
Google’s stock price surged to a nine-month high on Friday, reflecting Wall Street’s deepening admiration of the internet search leader as it continues to make extraordinary growth look routine. The Mountain View-based company’s shares climbed as high as ,10 before falling back slightly to close at ,67.
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/ 19 October 2006
Lance Armstrong has blasted a new book, going on sale on Thursday, that claims to include fresh doping allegations against the seven-time Tour de France champion. LA Officiel has already caused a stir in Armstrong’s camp, which tried to debunk the book before it even hit the store shelves.
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/ 19 October 2006
United States President George Bush on Wednesday for the first time acknowledged a possible parallel between the raging violence in Iraq and the Vietnam war. Bush was asked in an ABC News interview if he agreed with a New York Times columnist’s comparison of the strife in Iraq with the Tet offensive, which is considered a key turning point in the US war in Vietnam.
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/ 19 October 2006
After starting out as just small loans for the poor, microfinance has mushroomed into a large market that is attracting big banks, technology billionaires, and last week brought its innovator the Nobel Peace Prize. The business of lending small amounts of money to the poor who are unable to access loans elsewhere was once considered unfathomable by the financial mainstream.
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/ 19 October 2006
Trade ministers from four cotton-growing African nations will meet top United States officials next week for talks expected to focus on a stalled world trade round. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns and US Trade Representative Susan Schwab will meet the trade ministers from Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mali on Wednesday.
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/ 19 October 2006
Visa and MasterCard have stopped accepting credit card transactions for purchases of online music made on a Russian website accused of selling music illegally, officials for both payment systems said. San Francisco-based Visa asked member banks not to process purchases from AllofMP3.com from September 1, said Simon Barker, a spokesperson for the company.
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/ 19 October 2006
The seven bison on display in a fenced enclosure at Oklahoma’s Chikasaw National Recreation Area hardly evoke the teeming hordes that once stretched to the horizon. But some ecologists hope that they can reintroduce bison to the wild in parts of the American West.
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/ 18 October 2006
The United States now has a population of more than 300-million people, the United States Census Bureau said on Tuesday, although it will not designate the person who broke the historic barrier. The Census Bureau keeps count of the estimated number of Americans, based on the birth rate, death rate and immigration rate.
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/ 18 October 2006
The last landmines and unexploded ordnance blocking Mozambique’s vital Sena railway line have been removed, thanks largely to about -million in United States aid, the US State Department said on Tuesday. The humanitarian mine action assistance launched in 2002 ”has saved lives, created jobs, encouraged more than -million in World Bank loans,” the department said.
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/ 18 October 2006
The United States will accept 10 000 Burundian refugees from Tanzania from now until 2008. Tom Casey, a State Department spokesperson, said they were planning to offer resettlement to a group of Burundian refugees who have been in western camps in Tanzania, some of whom initially fled from Burundi in 1972.
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/ 18 October 2006
A fresh wave of atheistic books has hit the market this autumn, some climbing onto best-seller lists in what proponents see as a backlash against the way religion is entwined in politics. ”Religion is fragmenting the human community,” said Sam Harris, author of Letter to a Christian Nation, number 11 on the New York Times non-fiction list on October 15.
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/ 18 October 2006
The dirty dancing of teenagers at school functions and prom nights is getting educators across the United States hot and bothered, the <i>Los Angeles Times</i> reported on Tuesday. The teenage dance craze of "freaking" — where couples rub and grind against each other — has been branded as simulated sex by school officials and has led to concern across the nation, the paper reported.
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/ 17 October 2006
United States President George Bush signed a law on Tuesday authorising tough interrogation and prosecution of terrorism suspects and took an indirect, election-year swipe at Democrats who opposed the legislation. Bush, trying to help Republicans maintain control of the US Congress by emphasising national security, called the Military Commissions Act of 2006 ”one of the most important pieces of legislation in the war on terror”.
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/ 17 October 2006
Freddy Fender, the ”Bebop Kid” of the Texas-Mexico border who later turned his twangy tenor into the smash country ballad Before the Next Teardrop Falls, died on October 14. He was 69. Fender, who was diagnosed with lung cancer in early 2006, died at noon at his Corpus Christi home with his family at his bedside, said Ron Rogers, a family spokesperson.
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/ 17 October 2006
Former United States Republican Gerry Studds, the first openly gay person elected to Congress, died early on October 14 at the Boston Medical Centre, several days after he collapsed while walking his dog, his husband said. Studds fell unconscious on October 3 because of what doctors later determined was a blood clot in his lung, Dean Hara said.
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/ 17 October 2006
Google is converting its renowned headquarters to run partly on solar power, hoping to set an example for other businesses in the United States. The internet search leader announced what is believed to be the largest solar project undertaken by a US company during a solar energy conference in Silicon Valley on Monday.
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/ 15 October 2006
The United Nations Security Council voted unanimously on Saturday to impose financial and weapons sanctions on North Korea for its claimed nuclear test in a resolution that Pyongyang immediately rejected. The US-drafted resolution said the reclusive communist state’s action was a ”clear threat to international peace and security”.
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/ 14 October 2006
Belgium, Italy and South Africa will on Monday be selected as non-permanent members of the United Nations Security Council for the 2007/08 period, a spokesperson said on Friday. The three countries will be elected by secret ballot by the 192-member General Assembly to succeed Denmark and Greece and Tanzania respectively.
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/ 14 October 2006
Irish rock star Bono went on a shopping spree and appeared on the influential Oprah Winfrey TV chat show on Friday to launch his latest campaign to fight HIV/Aids in Africa. Saying he was convinced that ”this generation can be the generation that says ‘no’ to extreme poverty” in Africa, the U2 singer and activist urged Americans to buy ”Red”-branded clothes, cell phones, shoes and iPods.
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/ 14 October 2006
The United Nations Security Council expects to impose arms and financial sanctions on North Korea on Saturday for its reported nuclear weapons test, with United States intelligence pointing to confirmation that it took place. In Washington, a preliminary US intelligence analysis has shown radioactivity in air samples collected near a suspected North Korean nuclear test site.
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/ 14 October 2006
The next secretary general of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon of South Korea, pledged on Friday to be a decisive leader and cautioned those who call him low-key not to mistake him for a pushover. ”I may look low-key or [be] soft-spoken but that does not mean that I lack leadership or commitment,” Ban told Reuters.
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/ 13 October 2006
Initial tests of air samples taken by United States planes near North Korea found no evidence of radiation, but the US is not ready to declare that Pyongyang did not detonate a nuclear device, a US government intelligence official said on Friday. Monday’s announcement by North Korea that it had tested a nuclear bomb sharply escalated world concerns.
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/ 13 October 2006
Women in post-conflict societies should play a bigger role in revitalising their countries, researchers of a new study said. Research conducted in the aftermath of three recent conflicts analysed the role of women in peace processes as well as the security of women in South Africa, Northern Ireland and Lebanon.
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/ 13 October 2006
African-Americans hoping to use DNA to find their roots may have to look harder than previously thought, researchers said on Thursday in a study they said shows Africans are too genetically mixed to make tracing easy. Several companies now offer to help Americans trace their African ancestry using mitochondrial DNA, which is passed from mother to daughter virtually unaltered.
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/ 13 October 2006
Walt Disney on Thursday said it took ”appropriate action” against employees at its Paris theme park who were caught simulating sex while dressed as Disney characters in a digital video that has received wide attention on the internet. Disney would not say whether it had dismissed any of the costumed employees featured in the grainy video, which appears to have been shot with a hidden camera.