You are currently browsing the Current World News weblog archives for the day Thursday, December 4th, 2008.

Breaking News

Which Debates Are Lighting Up The Net?

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Sky.Com News is on-air and online from 7.30pm tonight.
The most-clicked stories on Sky News Online:
Madeleine McCann: New Poster Launch In Spain
Tattoo Removal Creams Do Not Work, Doctors Say
Earthquakes Hit Southern Greece
Stephen Lawrence Centre Vandalised In Racist Incident
Georgian Billionaire Died Of Natural Causes, Initial Post-Mortem Says
The stories moving up the web agenda:
Lust Caution: Asia Hit By […]

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Kosovo Declares Independence From Serbia

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Kosovo has been run by the UN since Serb forces withdrew in June that year.
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Duffy has ‘Mercy’ at number one

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Welsh popstar Duffy has ended Basshunter’s five-week reign atop the singles chart.
‘Mercy’ debuts at number one on the strength of download sales alone, seeing off a challenge from Nickelback slow-burner ‘Rockstar’, which settles for two.
Also entering the top ten this week is dance track ‘What’s It Gonna Be’, from H ‘two’ O and Platnum at […]

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Russia: US Satellite Shot a Weapons Test

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Russia said Saturday that U.S. military plans to shoot down a damaged spy satellite may be a veiled test of America’s missile defense system.
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PAUL WAS CHEATING MILLS’ FOOL

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Britain’s News of the World reported Mills, who is expected to pocket more than $100 million in a divorce settlement from the former Beatle, supposedly was with film editor Tim Steel the night before she hooked up with McCartney for a Caribbean Valentine’s holiday.
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Clinton Campaign: Super Delegates Will Decide Nomination

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Harold Ickes, a top aide to former President Clinton now in charge of delegate counting for Sen. Hillary Clinton’s campaign, insisted today that neither Clinton nor Sen. Barack Obama can secure the Democratic nomination with just pledged delegates, the ones elected by voters through state primaries and caucuses.
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Pakistan: Feeling edgy before next week’s elections

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In Pakistan, parliamentary elections that will determine which party will control the government, and who will become the next prime minister, are scheduled for next Monday. The voting will take place in the aftermath of the assassination of politician Benazir Bhutto, the former head of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), who had returned to her […]

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Love at first bite

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I think about it at least a dozen times a day. If there is a piece floating around the kitchen I will sniff it out and scoff it down. My dreams are sometimes punctuated with images of the stuff and I invariably wake up craving one.After a life-time of successfully avoiding addiction to substances such […]

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Inside Than Shwe’s jungle fortress

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[Our correspondent inside Burma recently visited Naypyidaw, the military dictatorship’s bizarre new capital. A shorter version of this article appears in today’s newspaper.]
Kenneth DenbyNaypyidaw, Burma
Even before you have arrived in the remarkable city of Naypyidaw, it is obvious that this is a place like no other in Burma. It’s not just the isolation, in a […]

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Britney taken away in a stretcher: deja vu?

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THE Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky once said that art imitates life, then life will imitate art, then life will find its very meaning from the arts.
The latest chapter in the Britney Spears drama recalls these words, writes Ariadne Zanella.
Aerial footage from a local television station shows Spears being wheeled out in a stretcher to […]

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Time for In-House Cleaning?

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WASHINGTON — For years, Colombia was in a state of denial about drug trafficking. Officials too easily claimed it wasn’t their problem, that Colombians were not the consumers of cocaine and heroin. But in the late 1990s, allegations that Colombia was becoming a narco-state led President Andres Pastrana to develop a comprehensive anti-drug strategy, known […]

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The ‘Blame The Iraqis’ Gambit

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When people want to justify the unjustifiable and accept the unacceptable, they try all kinds of ways to make themselves feel better about their decision. For those who want to pull out of Iraq, there is a whole panoply of excuses:
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Candidates on Message

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MUNICH — Karl Wendl, an Austrian journalist and author and my neighbor at this Bavarian capital’s annual conference on global security, gets a lot of fun out of the American election campaign for a mere $30 plus online charges.

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Colombian Envoy’s Title Is New, but Mission Is Same

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As Colombian President Andr?s Pastrana drove back from the remote jungles and highlands after a historic meeting with guerrillas linked to the drug trade in the summer of 1998, he caught a glimpse of a low-flying eagle.
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Elation and Dread as Kosovo Declaration Nears

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PRISTINA, Serbia, Feb. 16 — A new line of T-shirts here bears the words “Uncle, It’s Over” and a portrait of Adem Jashari, a founder of the Kosovo Liberation Army. His killing by Serb forces in 1998, along with at least 50 other people, many of them his relatives, brought the little-known guerrilla organization into […]

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As Sense of Crisis Deepens, Pakistanis Prepare to Vote

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ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Feb. 16 — Few people understand the hardships entailed in Pakistani politics better than Israr Shah.

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Forests Vanishing Swiftly in Haiti

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GRAND COLLINE, Haiti, Feb. 16 — Far from the spreading slums of the Haitian capital, past barren dirt mountains and hillsides stripped to a chalky white core, two woodcutters bring down a towering oak tree in one of the few forested valleys left in the Caribbean country.

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Colombian Drug Lord Found Dead in Venezuela

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CARACAS, Venezuela, Feb. 1 — One of Colombia’s most-wanted drug lords has been found slain, Venezuela’s top counter-narcotics official said Friday.

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Weak Dollar Fuels China’s Buying Spree Of U.S. Firms

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SHANGHAI — From his posh office in a coastal city in eastern China, millionaire Zhou Jiaru oversees more than 100 workers at an auto parts refurbishing factory he purchased in a struggling manufacturing town on the other side of the world.

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In Africa, Bush Pushes Kenya Power-Sharing Agreement

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COTONOU, Benin, Feb. 16 — President Bush opened a six-day, five-nation tour of Africa on Saturday with a warning to Kenya’s government that it needs to agree to a power-sharing arrangement with the opposition to settle a post-election upheaval that has torn the country apart.

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