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PRAGUE (Reuters) - The United States signed a pact on Tuesday to build part of a U.S. missile defense shield in the Czech Republic, prompting neighboring Russia to warn it will react with military means if the shield is deployed.
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Leaders from the biggest industrialised nations are meeting their counterparts from the developing world, on the final day of the G8 summit in Japan.
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Mosul is the capital of Ninevah province, which a year ago was thought by the top American commanders in the region to be ready to be returned to Iraqi provincial control. But last fall it became clear that al-Qaida and other insurgent groups were holding sway in the western section of the city.
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The normally decadent desert town is beginning to feel the pinch as the credit crisis hits hard.
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admin @ July 8, 2008
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Kate and Gerry McCann
have been given fresh hope of a breakthrough in the search for their missing
daughter Madeleine after police agreed to give them access to some of their
files on the case.
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TOYAKO, Japan (July

- Sorry about that, Silvio.
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Britain was facing a deepening economic crisis today as the FTSE plunged into a so-called ‘bear market’ for the first time in five years and a series of reports laid bare the full extent of the problems facing the nation’s economy.
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World leaders are not renowned for their modest wine selections or reticence at the G8 summit’s cheese board.
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Question: What’s next for Zimbabwe?
On June 27, 2008, Robert Mugabe ran for his sixth term as president of Zimbabwe, a position he’s held since the country’s 1980 independence. However, Mugabe competed in the runoff election against himself: Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who led after the first round of voting and is widely believed to have actually won outright, pulled out of the vote days before balloting, citing increasing violence and intimidation against Zimbabweans in the run-up to elections. This included the deaths of dozens of MDC members. On Election Day, militias loyal to Mugabe forced citizens to the polls.
Answer: Here’s what will follow — or could follow — the June 27, 2008, vote:
- Assessment of what went on before the vote: Human Rights Watch, in calling for the global community to reject the results of the election, monitored violence and intimidation before the vote. From HRW’s report: “Zimbabweans told Human Rights Watch that at several polling stations in Harare they were forced to pass through unofficial stations set up by ZANU-PF outside polling booths, and submit their names and details to ZANU-PF officials. They were given cards and ordered to write down the serial numbers of their ballot papers so that ZANU-PF officials could trace those who had voted for Mugabe and those who had not.
“In the days before the vote, ZANU-PF supporters rounded up and beat scores of people in the suburbs of Epworth and Chitungwiza on the outskirts of Harare. Many people sustained serious injuries, including multiple fractures, and were hospitalized at Parirenyatwa hospital in Harare. In one incident, three people told Human Rights Watch that ZANU-PF supporters forced them to attend a rally in Epworth at which former Minister of Mines Amos Midzi spoke. He told people that they would be beaten because they supported the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC); then ZANU-PF supporters beat them with batons and sticks.
After the beatings ZANU-PF supporters informed people that if they valued their lives they would go and vote for Mugabe. The ZANU-PF supporters also told the people that they would go door to door after the vote checking peoplesÂ’ fingers for the ink.”
Amnesty International has been documenting human-rights abuses connected to the elections, as well.
- International condemnation: Besides Archbishop Desmond Tutu calling Mugabe “Frankenstein,” most Western nations and African countries such as Rwanda and Kenya have condemned the strong-arm tactics employed by Mugabe to gain another term. The European Union condemned the runoff and was weighing action against Mugabe’s regime, though a travel and arms embargo was already in place. The G-8 also called the vote “illegitimate.”
- African Union discusses shunning Mugabe: But this is unlikely to happen. Going into the Sharm el-Sheikh summit following Mugabe’s swearing in, Tanzanian Foreign Minister Bernard Membe said, “It will be none of this summit’s business to choose the titles for leaders, it is the business of this summit to see what we are going to do for the suffering people and masses in Africa.” Others pooh-poohed the idea of sanctions.
However, most Zimbabweans are hoping that the AU will get tough and intervene in the crisis. Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga called for the AU to deploy troops in Zimbabwe, saying, “President Mugabe went ahead with the fake elections in which he competed against himself. That was a fake victory and we do not recognize it.”
- At the Security Council: The U.N. body, which had urged a runoff delay after Tsvangirai dropped out, hadn’t come to agreement on the legitimacy of Mugabe’s election because of opposition from ally South Africa. The U.S. then declared it would pursue sanctions against Zimbabwe at the council, but China and Russia — which both hold veto power — have balked about the idea.
- Sanctions: On June 29, 2008, the day Mugabe was sworn in for his sixth term, Canada imposed travel restrictions on key members of the ruling party in Zimbabwe and closed its airspace to planes registered in Zimbabwe. “Canada does not consider the result of the June 27 election to be, by any reasonable standard of democracy, a credible outcome,” said Foreign Minister David Emerson. “This ‘election’ is illegitimate and will not be accepted by the government of Canada.” The U.S. government called for an international arms embargo and further sanctions, yet said it will still provide food and assistance to fight AIDS.
- Consideration of force: Tsvangirai called for the possibility of an internationl peacekeeping force to be considered for Zimbabwe. After Mugabe’s one-man runoff, Archbishop Tutu also said he would support an international force. But those encouraging action to help the people of Zimbabwe are in general agreement that the African Union must play a strong role in this, and the AU is reluctant to take action against Mugabe.
- Negotiations: Running a peaceful campaign of democratic resistance, Tsvangirai has said he is open to talks pushing for new elections and even a new constitution. He has also floated the possibility of a unity government that would include members of the ZANU-PF party but exclude its leader, Mugabe. However, Tsvangirai had already survived four assassination attempts going into elections, and after the first round of voting was kept out of the country because of another assassination plot linked to Mugabe’s forces. The violence casts a pall over the possibility for meaningful talks.
- More violence: The Independent newspaper in the U.K. reports that those voting lists mentioned by Human Rights Watch have been handed over to Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party in order to enact a bloody “final solution”: eradicating remaining members of the MDC.
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The trial of Michel Fourniret — who reportedly enlisted his wife’s help to seize virgin girls to rape and kill — began March 27, 2008, with Fourniet refusing to speak unless court went into closed session and refusing to let the press take his photograph. The Times of London reported the gory details:
“The couple resembled ordinary French pensioners, he with his arms folded in a professorial pose, she sucking in her cheeks like a watchful grandmother. Behind the façade, however, lay a cold-blooded sexual predator who raped and killed victims with the help of his wife and accomplice, a court was told yesterday.
As Michel Fourniret and Monique Olivier sat in a glass-fronted dock on the opening day of their trial, jurors were told chilling details of the grey-haired couple alleged to be among the most horrific criminals in the history of France. Using an image of happily-married respectability, Olivier would gain the confidence of the girls and women they had identified as prey.
After they had been bound, gagged and sometimes drugged by her husband, she would examine them to check they were the virgins he desired.
She would then hand them over to Fourniret ‘in the sole aim of allowing him to fulfil his fantasies,’ according to a report read out in the court in Charleville-Mézières, in the Franco-Belgian border region where they once lived. He would assault his victims — ‘beautiful little subjects’ was how he referred to them — before shooting or strangling them, the report by investigating magistrates said.
One, a ’serious, prudent and intelligent’ 20-year-old student, had air injected into her veins to provoke a heart attack, the magistrates said.
Fourniret, 65, is on trial charged with the murder of seven girls and women aged between 12 and 21 in France and Belgium between 1987 and 2001. He has confessed to the crimes.
Olivier, 59, who is charged with one count of murder and complicity in four other killings, has admitted helping her husband but has sought to minimise her role with a claim that she was in his psychological grip.”
The “Ogre of the Ardennes” and his wife were expected to also stand trial in the future for other slayings in which they are suspects; this trial, though, was expected to take about two months. Fourniret apparently expected to get life in prison, but Olivier was reportedly hoping for leniency on a platform of being the manipulated wife.
Fourniret was caught in 2003, when a Belgian would-be victim, 13, broke free after being kidnapped. She reportedly told police that Fourniret bragged he was “far better” than Belgian serial killer Marc Dutroux.
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admin @ July 8, 2008