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West urges Chinese restraint on Tibet (World, 29 articles)
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China's official Xinhua News Agency reported that most of the victims were business people, killed after protests led by Buddhist monks against Chinese rule in Tibet turned violent Friday. Chinese state media acknowledged the protests for the first time on Friday, with Xinhua, the government news agency, reporting that shops had been set on fire in Lhasa and many businesses forced to close. Angry Tibetan crowds in the remote mountain city attacked government offices, burned vehicles and shops and threw stones at police on Friday in bloody confrontations that left many injured, according to Chinese state media reports. There have been violent clashes between protesters and security forces in Tibet's main city of Lhasa as rallies against Chinese rule, said to be the largest in 20 years, continue. BEIJING - Soldiers and police have been deployed around two Buddhist monasteries in Tibet's capital where monks launched protests against Chinese rule earlier this week, witnesses and residents said Thursday. Chinese security officers were out in force on Thursday as an uneasy calm settled on the city after hundreds of Buddhist monks and ethnic Tibetans staged protests against Chinese rule.
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Other stories about Tibetan, China and Beijing:
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At least 42 killed in Iraq; 3 U.S. troops die - (World, 11 articles)
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The attack came a day after an American soldier died when a roadside bomb hit his patrol near Diwaniyah, 80 miles south of Baghdad. According to an Associated Press count, at the height of unrest from November 2006 to August 2007, on average about 65 Iraqis died each day as a result of violence. US soldiers and Iraqi militants exchanged fire after a rocket attack from a Shi'ite Mehdi Army militia stronghold on a U.S. base southeast of Baghdad, Iraqi police said on Thursday.
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Other stories about Iraqi, Iraq and Baghdad:
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EU leaders issue rare euro rate warning (World, 14 articles)
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The warning came as the economic downturn focused European leaders on the impact on industry of their groundbreaking agreement last year to cut carbon emissions by 20 percent from 1990 levels by 2020. Brussels EU leaders clashed last night over how to cut greenhouse gases a year after making climate change their top priority with a series of tough targets. The leaders also moved to reassure investors and businesses that Europe's economy can weather the financial storm, adding that the bloc's euro currency can withstand " undesirable volatility and disorderly movements of exchange rates.
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U.S. assesses Israeli and Palestinian peace shortfalls (World, 12 articles)
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Jerusalem - Over the past seven days, Israel and the Palestinians have absorbed stunning blows that have led to mourning across the region - and shaken hopes for U.S.-promoted peace talks. The Hamas prime minister called publicly Wednesday for a period of calm with Israel, laying out conditions that would end attacks on Palestinian militants, open Gaza's borders and lift economic sanctions. Shortly after the appeal by Ismail Haniyeh, Israeli troops opened fire on a car in the West Bank town of Bethlehem and killed four Palestinian militants, clouding the prospects for a cease-fire.
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A Post-Musharraf Pakistan Policy (World, 12 articles)
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The realities in Pakistan are that the government is trying to deal with a deep and broad challenge to its authority from various radical and extremist groups. At the same time the government is trying to build its own legitimacy and bring about a political transition from what has been largely military rule to something more civilian in character. India and Pakistan have fought four wars against each other and came very close to a fifth after the terrorist attack on the Indian parliament in December 2001.
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ABC News: CIA: We Got Bin Laden Translator (World, 6 articles)
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U.S. authorities revealed Friday that they are holding a high-level al-Qaeda figure who helped Osama bin Laden escape from Afghanistan. The United States Department of Defence said in a release that "high-value detainee" Muhammad Rahimal-Afghani has been transferred to the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The CIA transferred al-Afghani to the Pentagon's custody this week, officials said, but declined to reveal when or where the prisoner had been captured.
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Taiwan reverses ban on China investment (World, 5 articles)
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" A potential military confrontation with Taiwan, and the prospect of U.S. military intervention, remain the PLA's most immediate military concerns the report said, referring to the People's Liberation Army, China's military. After the report's release, Chinese President Hu Jintao condemned Taiwanese independence moves as a threat to China's sovereignty in unusually strong remarks. Taiwan is very unlikely ever to return to Chinese rule, Chen Shui-bian, Taiwan's outgoing president, said on Thursday, claiming the preservation of the island state's de-facto independence as his political legacy.
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Venezuela, Colombia Leaders to Meet (World, 10 articles)
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The governments of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Colombia's Alvaro Uribe issued statements Thursday night saying the two had spoken by phone and agreed to meet in person und a major shift after recently trading accusations and insults. The governments said the leaders plan to meet soon to strengthen relations after their confrontation over the Colombian military's March 1 cross-border attack in Ecuador that killed 25 people, including a Colombian rebel leader. SAO PAULO, BRAZIL U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice declined to say Thursday whether the Bush administration would move to designate Venezuela a state sponsor of terrorism after new revelations about the country's alleged links to Colombian rebels.
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Chad-Sudan pact seen crucial for peace in Darfur (World, 4 articles)
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Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir and his Chadian counterpart Idriss Deby signed the non-aggression deal in Senegal late on Thursday in an effort to end cross-border rebel attacks on their respective territories. Under the pact, drafted by Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade, Deby and Bashir pledged to ban the activities of all armed groups and to prevent the use of their respective territories to destabilize their neighbors The presidents of Chad and Sudan have signed an accord in Senegal aimed at halting five years of hostilities between the two countries.
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The morality police try to roll back reform amid culture clash in Iran (World, 10 articles)
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In an almost deserted polling station in north Tehran yesterday The Times asked the woman in charge how many people had voted (Martin Fletcher and Ramita Navai write). Coaches, cars and minibuses soon clog the four-lane highway leading up to the vast complex in the desert outside the holy Iranian city of Qom. Unlike the primary season in the United States, Iranians do not support the ballot choices offered to them by the regime of the Islamic Republic.
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US demands N Korea nuclear data (World, 4 articles)
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Wolcott previously served as U.S. alternate representative at the United Nations in New York and was a permanent representative to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva. " In this capacity, Ambassador Wolcott will work with counterparts in other countries to develop international cooperation to strengthen the nuclear nonproliferation regime the State Department said of Wolcott's new role. One of the main jobs in her new post will be to help implement a nuclear energy and nonproliferation declaration initialed by U.S. President George W. Bush and outgoing Russian President Vladimir Putin last July after talks in Kennebunkport, Maine.
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Britain's Blair calls for developing nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions (World, 4 articles)
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CHIBA, Japan - China, India and other developing nations will have to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions if the world is to avert a global warming disaster, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair said at a climate change conference Saturday. An agreement to succeed the Kyoto global warming pact that expires at the end of 2012 will have to find a way to include developing nations, while allowing them to grow their economies, Blair said. The United States and other wealthy countries are eager to include growing economies und and polluters und such as China and India on the next global warming pact.
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Judge grants Khadr defence request for details of interrogations (World, 5 articles)
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GUANTÁNAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba - A Navy defense lawyer on Thursday accused a senior Army officer - identified only as "Lt. Col. W" - of altering evidence in the case of Canadian captive Omar Khadr. The U.S. military has charged Omar Khadr with murder for throwing a grenade that killed Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer during a U.S. military raid on July 27, 2002, on an al-Qaida compound in eastern Afghanistan. Khadr's legal team has argued that the information is key to determining whether the Toronto-born man was pressured into making incriminating statements through torture during questioning at an Afghanistan air base.
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Sarkozy's Party Sobered in French Vote (World, 5 articles)
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Arsenal's Emirates stadium is to host the main meetings for the keenly awaited French state visit later this month, with football making way for high diplomacy and Carla Bruni. President Nicolas Sarkozy is counting on the likes of Mr Mineo, a disappointed but still sympathetic 46-year-old window cleaner, to help the governing centre-right UMP party win this southern city, France's second largest, in local elections on Sunday. Peres' five-day trip to Paris this week is the first state visit the French president has hosted since taking office 10 months ago und itself a potent message of support at a time of renewed Middle Eastern tensions.
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Vatican Updates Its Thou-Shalt-Not List (World, 5 articles)
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VATICAN CITY A Vatican keen to show its green side has added pollution to the realm of "new sins" that today's Catholics must confront and avoid. In this age of expanding globalization, the Vatican is telling followers that sin is not just an individual act but can also be a transgression against the larger community. Others include gene manipulation (such as cloning or stem cell research), drug abuse and becoming too wealthy, as well as practices more routinely condemned by the Roman Catholic Church, such as abortion.
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White House: No Shift in Iran Policy (World, 5 articles)
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" U.S. policy toward Iran remains unchanged said Gordon Johndroe Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sounded a similar note in a brief exchange with reporters, saying President Bush believes " a diplomatic solution to the Iran issue is possible if the world stays strong and reacts in a unified way. Some of Fallon's reported goals (redeploy troops from Iraq to Afghanistan, avoid war with Iran) sound a lot like Sen. Barack Obama's.
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ABC News: Gay Asylum Seeker Avoids Deportation (World, 4 articles)
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Ms Smith intervened after receiving representations from MPs and peers alarmed that Mr Kazemi could face execution if returned to his homeland. Britain granted a gay Iranian teenager a reprieve on Thursday from deportation to Iran, where he says he could be hanged for his homosexuality. Interior Minister Jacqui Smith said in a statement that "in the light of new circumstances" 19-year-old Mehdi Kazemi's appeal for asylum in Britain should be reconsidered.
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Qatar Set to Open First Catholic Church (World, 4 articles)
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The consecration of the Church of Our Lady of the Rosary, planned for Saturday, appears to be a sign of Qatar's efforts to open up to the West as it seeks a bid for the Olympic Games in 2016. Attracted by a booming oil economy, expatriate workers make up at least 70 percent of Qatar's population of about 1 million. Some 150,000 Christians of all denominations live here, over 90 percent of them Catholic expatriate workers from the Philippines and other Asian nations, Christian community representatives said.
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blaster@cs.columbia.edu
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