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PERUGIA, Italy (Oct. 28) – An American college student and her former boyfriend were ordered Tuesday to stand trial in last year’s slaying of her roommate, while the judge also convicted an Ivory Coast man in the killing, lawyers said. Read more
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The BBC has received more than 10,000 complaints from irate viewers after Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand made offensive phone calls to Fawlty Towers actor Andrew Sachs. Read more
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SEOUL, South Korea – North Korea’s reclusive, authoritarian leader is likely to be issuing orders from a hospital bed, Japan’s prime minister has said. Read more
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Why the Valentine’s Day party poopers? Valentine’s Day = St. Valentine = not an Islamic holiday. Plus, as an Islamic scholar told the Saudi Gazette, “As Muslims we shouldn’t celebrate a non-Muslim celebration especially this one that encourages immoral relations between unmarried men and women.” So in Saudi Arabia, the religious police — agents of [...]
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Saudi Arabia’s king called for greater dialogue and openness between the world’s monotheistic religions on March 24, 2008. In the face of rising tensions over Mohammed cartoons, al-Qaida claiming Pope Benedict XVI is leading a crusade, and a stalled Middle East peace process, King Abdullah‘s outreach took on extra weight. From the International Herald Tribune: [...]
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Congratulations to the very deserving Hu Jia, who has been awarded the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. Named for political dissident and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Andrei Sakharov, the first prize was given to Nelson Mandela and Soviet dissident Anatoli Marchenko (posthumously) in 1988. Predictably, Beijing is mad. China’s ambassador to [...]
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This seems to be a viral essay on the Web — it was posted in the rollicking comment thread for today’s column under a fake name (Ann T. McBush) and I find other unattributed versions of it using Google. But whatever the source, it’s worth pondering: Read more
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1:52pm UK, Tuesday October 28, 2008 Dominic Waghorn, Middle East correspondent Why did America launch a daylight helicopter attack on Syria provoking worldwide outrage? The plot thickens. Mourners at [...]
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BBC Mark Foster has refuted Arlene Phillips’s claims that swimming is a similar discipline to dancing. The Olympic swimmer, who was eliminated from the competition on Saturday night, remarked that the judge’s comments were inaccurate. He told Claudia Winkleman on Strictly Come Dancing – It Takes Two that Phillips’s claim that breathing techniques were similar [...]
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Germany’s foreign minister says Pakistan must secure a loan from the International Monetary Fund within a week to avert a financial crisis. Read more
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A Mexican woman with a hunger for overweight guys has married the world’s fattest man in a ceremony where the groom was rolled to a Monterrey wedding hall in a custom-made flatbed truck because he was too large to get out of bed. Read more
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Former HP CEO Carly Fiorina, a McCain economic adviser, is resurfacing in the spotlight after a headline-making incident on the campaign trail — and it looks like she might be making headlines again. Read more
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It’s no secret that China has become the world’s factory, manufacturing and exporting just about everything in the years since the late communist leader Deng Xiapoing launched his “socialism with Chinese characteristics” economic reforms in 1978. China also has become one of the main creditors of the government of the United States, which George W. [...]
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The gaffe was so embarrassing I feel the need to share to prevent other people from making the same face-reddening blunder.Picture the scene: a small, mountain town of Christians tucked away in the north of Iraq. The winding streets are lined with simple, stone-walled houses, branching up from an old church situated in the centre. [...]
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The BBC is facing yet another storm of controversy after highly paid presenters Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross ganged up to prank call Andrew Sachs, the Fawlty Towers legend. The pair suggested in lewd terms that Brand had enjoyed a sexual relationship with the 23-year-old granddaughter of Sachs, who played Manuel in the classic sitcom. [...]
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KIGALI, Rwanda — C’est la vie. In another blow to the language of love, the Rwandan government has decided to change instruction in schools from French to English. All government employees are now required to learn English, and everyone here from lawmakers to taxi drivers to students to businesspeople seems to believe that the usefulness [...]
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TEHRAN, Oct. 27 — An illness that caused President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to cancel some scheduled events last week has become a political issue as Iran prepares for presidential elections next year. Read more
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KIGALI, Rwanda — C’est la vie. In another blow to the language of love, the Rwandan government has decided to change instruction in schools from French to English. All government employees are now required to learn English, and everyone here from lawmakers to taxi drivers to students to businesspeople seems to believe that the usefulness [...]
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CAIRO, Oct. 27 — An apparent U.S. helicopter raid into Syria on Sunday killed eight people, prompting a sharp condemnation from Damascus and a defense of the cross-border operation from an Iraqi official who said it targeted a known group of terrorists. Read more
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JERUSALEM, Oct. 26 — Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on Sunday gave up trying to form a coalition government, paving the way for new elections in early 2009. Palestinian officials worried that her decision could also mean the end of the fragile Israeli-Palestinian peace process, which resumed just under a year ago and had been [...]