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/ 13 February 2006
Phil Brown, who played Luke Skywalker’s Uncle Owen in the 1977 hit film Star Wars, has died. Though Brown worked in stage and film for more than 30 years, many remember him best for his brief role as the loving uncle who tries to give Skywalker a normal childhood.
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/ 13 February 2006
Jaws author Peter Benchley, the man who made the ocean a scary place for millions of fans, was actually quite fond of sharks, an image that seems as jarring as Alfred Hitchcock, the director of Psycho, enjoying a nice, relaxing shower.
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/ 13 February 2006
Researchers scouring the remote forests of the African island nation of Madagascar have found that tiny assassin spiders, grotesque-looking bugs that prey on other spiders, are more diverse than previously thought. Assassin spiders, which grow to less than 0,3cm long, are notorious for stabbing helpless spiders with their sharp, venom-filled fangs.
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/ 13 February 2006
Here lies the forgotten history of New York. And here. And over there. All across the city’s five boroughs, old cemeteries are tucked away, some visible but ignored by passers-by, some in the shadow of latter-day high-rises, some so remote as to be overlooked entirely.
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/ 13 February 2006
For many, Valentine’s Day conjures up images of love, romance, flowers and chocolate. But for detective agencies across the United States, the romantic holiday is a boon for business as it is the ideal time for a spouse to catch a cheating mate.
"Valentine’s Day is the biggest day of the year for private investigators," says Tony Delorenzo, of Private Detectives of America.
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/ 12 February 2006
A scraggy Philip Esposito steps on an uptown train and begins telling his story: He’s HIV positive, homeless and hungry. He needs a few dollars to get something to eat. Commuters lining the subway car have heard it all before. They ignore him, many assuming he’s full of it. But Esposito (27) isn’t lying.
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/ 11 February 2006
Groovy is over, hip is square, far out is long gone. Don’t worry, though — it’s cool. ”Cool” remains the gold standard of slang in the 21st century, as reliable as a blue-chip stock, surviving like few expressions ever in the constantly evolving English language. It has kept its cool through the centuries — even as its meaning changed drastically.
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/ 10 February 2006
A former CIA official who coordinated United States intelligence on the Middle East has accused the Bush administration of ”cherry-picking” intelligence on Iraq to justify a decision it had already reached to go to war, The Washington Post reported on Friday.
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/ 10 February 2006
A former CIA official who coordinated United States intelligence on the Middle East has accused the Bush administration of ”cherry-picking” intelligence on Iraq to justify a decision it had already reached to go to war, The Washington Post reported on Friday.
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/ 10 February 2006
Bottled water consumption, which has more than doubled globally in the last six years, is a natural resource that is heavily taxing the world’s ecosystem, according to a new United States study. The study says that although bottled water is often no healthier than tap water, it can end up costing 10 000 times more.
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/ 10 February 2006
Indicted former top White House aide Lewis ”Scooter” Libby will argue that Vice-President Dick Cheney authorised him to leak classified information in 2003 to bolster the case for the United States-led war against Iraq, US news media reported late on Thursday.
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/ 10 February 2006
Whether you peed in snowballs and chucked them at your friends or fed your unsuspecting vegetarian sister some meat, chances are your most embarrassing, tightly-held secrets are yearning for an audience. That’s where United States artist Frank Warren comes in. He has hit upon an ingenious outlet for all those dirty little secrets we mischievously, or shamefully hide.
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/ 10 February 2006
Commercial passenger flights into space could be authorised in the United States by 2008, US Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta told a group of space entrepreneurs on Thursday. ”The timeline isn’t based on science fiction,” he said in a statement released by the department.
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/ 10 February 2006
Bottled-water consumption, which has more than doubled globally in the past six years, is a natural resource that is heavily taxing the world’s ecosystem, according to a new United States study. "At as much as $2,50 per litre, bottled water costs more than gasoline," the study says.
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/ 9 February 2006
Rebecca Webb Carranza, who is credited with playing an important role in popularising the tortilla chip, has died at age 98. In the late 1940s, the Carranza family’s Los Angeles-based El Zarape Tortilla Factory began making tortillas by machine, but at first many of the corn and flour disks were misshapen and had to be thrown away.
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/ 8 February 2006
Iran has much of what it needs to build a nuclear bomb and lacks only the know-how to put the pieces together, the United States State Department said on Tuesday. The comments by department spokesperson Sean McCormack constituted the second worrying assessment by the United States as it stepped up efforts to mobilise support for UN action against Tehran.
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/ 8 February 2006
Sheriff’s officials said on Tuesday they were working on a computerised plan to identify and isolate the most dangerous jail inmates but warned it would not prevent all future violence in an overcrowded system that exploded into deadly racial riots.
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/ 8 February 2006
Despite a last-minute snag, a United Nations Security Council panel on Tuesday slapped a 12-month travel ban and asset freeze on three Côte d’Ivoire politicians viewed as obstacles to peace. Targeted by the sanctions were Charles Ble Goude and Eugene Djue, two leaders of the nationalist "Young Patriots" loyal to Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo.
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/ 8 February 2006
Google married its e-mail and instant messaging services on Tuesday in a union designed to streamline online communications. The Silicon Valley-based Internet search giant introduced Gmail Chat, which allows users to quickly start instant message conversations with people they are e-mailing.
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/ 7 February 2006
United States aviator Steve Fossett, who last year made the first solo non-stop trip around the world in an airplane, was making final preparation early on Tuesday for another adventure, during which he plans to set a new record for the longest aircraft flight.
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/ 7 February 2006
Oil prices slipped on Monday as traders took profits after prices surged on fears that Iran might halt oil exports and after a cold front in the north-east United States was milder than expected. Light, sweet crude for March delivery fell by 26 cents to settle at ,11 a barrel on Monday on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
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/ 6 February 2006
The White House on Monday proposed a ,77-trillion Budget for the next fiscal year that boosts defence and homeland security spending while trimming many social programmes. President George Bush’s Budget for the fiscal year starting October 1 will boost defence spending by 6,9% to ,3-billion.
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/ 2 February 2006
Patients suffering from severe lupus have experienced improvement when injected with blood stem cells from their own bone marrow, according to a study published in the United States. Of the patients with life-threatening lupus who received the treatment, 50% were disease free five years afterward, said the study.
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/ 2 February 2006
North Korea’s reluctance to return to the negotiating table over its nuclear weapons programme has fuelled speculation the United States may seek to refer the Stalinist state, like Iran, to the United Nations Security Council. Christopher Hill, the chief US negotiator to the nuclear talks, said that Washington might consider other options if North Korea stayed away from the stalled negotiations.
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/ 2 February 2006
Newly appointed United States Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito broke ranks with fellow conservative jurists on his first day on the job, backing a ruling by the court to stay the execution of an inmate in the midwestern state of Missouri. Alito joined the majority in a 6-3 vote that rejected a request by Missouri authorities to execute convicted murderer Michael Taylor.
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/ 2 February 2006
A 45kg woman ate 26 grilled-cheese sandwiches in 10 minutes at a New York restaurant, winning the World Grilled-Cheese Eating Championship. Sonya Thomas won 000 for the contest at the Planet Hollywood restaurant in Times Square on Wednesday, but said she was disappointed in her performance.
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/ 2 February 2006
Pop princess Britney Spears will take a guest role in the hit United States television series Will & Grace, making her first-ever turn as a sitcom star, the NBC television network said on Wednesday. Spears (24) will play a Christian conservative sidekick to one of the show’s lead characters, the flamboyantly gay Jack.
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/ 1 February 2006
New York subway officials are axing advertisements that playfully urge subway riders to pretend they’re on vacation — showing cartoon figures fly-fishing on the tracks and lounging across subway seats. The ads are part of a Bahamas ministry of tourism campaign.
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/ 1 February 2006
Google said on Tuesday that fourth-quarter profits surged 82%, but its shares took a battering in after-hours trading because the figure was below Wall Street expectations. Google’s earnings were hurt by a higher-than-expected tax rate, sending its shares plunging as much as 19% in after-hours trading.
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/ 1 February 2006
The United States lost one of the last titans of the pioneer generation of the civil rights movement on Tuesday with the death of Coretta Scott King, the widow of Martin Luther King Jr. King, who was 78, had been in poor health since suffering a stroke last August.
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/ 1 February 2006
After steering the United States economy through an extraordinary boom
punctuated by recession and financial crises, Federal Reserve chairperson Alan Greenspan headed into a well-earned retirement on Tuesday. Greenspan (79) chaired his last meeting of the US central bank’s Federal Open Market Committee before handing over to top White House economic adviser Ben Bernanke.
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/ 1 February 2006
New Federal Reserve chairperson Ben Bernanke got down to work on Wednesday with a parting gift from his illustrious predecessor to cope with a new mood of uncertainty in the United States economy. Bernanke was to be sworn in at a private ceremony in the Fed building at 2pm GMT to succeed Alan Greenspan, who bowed out Tuesday with more one rate hike.