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This morning, the reported death toll from yesterday’s earthquake in southwest China had reached 12,000. Associated Press quotes Wang Zhenyao, the disaster-relief division director at China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs, who stated: “Survivors can hold on for some time. Now it’s not time to give up.” Wang indicated that rescue efforts could take a week. [...]
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WASHINGTON — Mexican Energy Secretary Georgina Kessel’s warning to the Mexican Congress last week sounded ominous: If legislators did not approve reforms within the oil sector, the country would suffer a “severe energy crisis” within a decade. Read more
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TOKYO — Quiet Asian diplomacy is proving as ineffective as Western bluster and U.N. moralizing in getting comprehensive aid to the victims of Burma’s cyclone. They are being left to die in the tens of thousands by a world that promised but failed to develop the tools of humanitarian intervention. Read more
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HANWANG, China, May 17 — Suddenly the groaning steam shovel went silent. Rescue workers in orange jumpsuits swarmed over chunks of concrete debris and closed in. Carefully, deliberately and, it seemed, respectfully, they began digging into the rubble with their hands. Read more
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CARACAS, Venezuela President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela has long pledged to buck Washington-backed economic policies in Latin America. Now, two months after winning reelection and consolidating his hold on the country with new powers to rule by decree, he is strengthening economic ties in the region in a bid to limit U.S. influence. Read more
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CARACAS, Venezuela, Nov. 30 — Captured videos on Friday gave the outside world the first look since 2003 at three Pentagon contractors held hostage in Colombia, showing them to be haggard but alive. French Colombian writer and former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt was also shown, looking thin and dispirited. Read more
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POSTVILLE, Iowa — Antonio Escobedo ran to get his wife Monday when he saw a helicopter circling overhead and immigration agents approaching the meatpacking plant where they both work. The couple hid for hours inside the plant before obtaining refuge in the pews and hall at St. Bridget’s Catholic Church, where hundreds of other Guatemalan [...]
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JOHANNESBURG, May 15 — Zimbabwe’s opposition party on Thursday called for an urgent new round of regional diplomacy to resolve that nation’s six-week-old electoral stalemate, saying that only foreign intervention can prevent a recent surge of political violence from developing into full-scale civil strife. Read more
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BAGHDAD, May 17 — Iraqi troops have detained hundreds of people in the northern city of Mosul, where a massive operation is underway to clear the area of Sunni extremists, Iraqi officials said Saturday. But many fighters had fled to other areas, according to the officials and a spokesman for the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda [...]
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CAIRO — At 1:49 a.m. in an Internet cafe only then quieting after Cairo’s daily rumble, 27-year-old Ahmed Maher worked at a computer. He wore the same shirt he had had on for two days. The essentials of his life on the run lay splayed out next to his keyboard — car keys, cigarettes, prepaid [...]
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GENOA, Italy (Reuters) – Pope Benedict on Sunday said he hoped a Dublin conference on cluster bombs will outlaw the deadly weapons by agreeing on a strong international convention. Read more
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BEICHUAN, China (Reuters) – Police tried to stop anguished relatives from streaming into one of the worst affected areas of China’s massive earthquake on Sunday, as another strong aftershock hit the area and the death toll rose to nearly 32,500. Read more
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Lord Malloch-Brown says that although only about 25% of victims have received the help they need, he saw UK and US aid being unloaded at Rangoon airport. Read more
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A 24-hour online memorial to the victims sponsored by top Chinese Web sites was launched Sunday at 2:28 p.m. EDT, exactly six days after the earthquake, with forums for people to post messages of sympathy and virtual wreaths for the dead. Read more
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A LITTLE over two weeks after Senator Edward Kennedy welcomed former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern to the family’s US stronghold of Boston, the leading Democrat and patriarch of America’s most famous political dynasty was airlifted to Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston yesterday after suffering a seizure at his home. Read more
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FEARS that Harrison Ford, at 65, is too venerable to play Indiana Jones were dispelled yesterday when the actor appeared in fine physical form as he left his hotel for a press conference at Cannes. Read more
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LONDON (May 16) – A letter in which Albert Einstein dismissed the idea of God as the product of human weakness and the Bible as “pretty childish” has sold at auction for more than $400,000. Read more
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The earthquake damage is summed up by photographs of what had been a thriving little town nestling in one of the most picturesque parts of China – now the scene of death and utter devastation. Read more
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Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro says 60 Colombian soldiers were intercepted in Venezuela’s Apure state on Friday, metres from the nations’ shared border. Read more
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If there’s one question perpetually being asked about Pakistan, it’s “what’s next?” Pakistan, particularly since the 9-11 terrorist attacks on the United States, has been the country that many can’t quite keep up with. Americans are usually loath to support leaders who staged a coup d’etat to snag the presidency, but President Pervez Musharraf’s pro-U.S. [...]