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US strikes undercut efforts on Pakistan-Afghan border (World, 17 articles)
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PESHAWAR, PAKISTAN The Pakistani army Wednesday accused the U.S. military of an "unprovoked and cowardly" airstrike that resulted in the deaths of 11 Pakistani infantrymen, threatening the cooperation between the two countries in combating terrorism. Yesterday the clash erupted when US-supported Afghan troops tried to establish a checkpost near Sheikh Baba in the Mohmand tribal region, along the disputed knife's-edge border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to local villagers and Pakistani military officials. The Pentagon has said an air strike by US forces in the Afghan-Pakistani border region, said to have killed 11 Pakistani soldiers, was legitimate. Villagers said US and Pakistani forces opened fire on each other, a dramatic escalation in tensions between the two countries, if true. US military officials says the bomb attack was called in after US ground forces were "ambushed" 1,000 yards inside Afghanistan by Taliban fighters who then fled across the border to Pakistan. ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Pakistan's army and the U.S. military gave widely differing accounts Wednesday of a clash on the Afghan border that left 11 Pakistani troops dead. A leading US think-tank has accused members of Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI, of aiding Taleban fighters in neighbouring Afghanistan.
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Other stories about Afghan, Afghanistan and Taleban:
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Bush, Merkel jointly call for new sanctions on Iran (World, 20 articles)
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US President George W Bush says he wants to pursue diplomacy to deal with Iran's controversial nuclear programme, but "all options are on the table". KRANJ, Slovenia - President Bush and European Union leaders threatened Iran on Tuesday with new financial sanctions unless the country curbs its nuclear ambitions and opens facilities to international inspection. President Bush on Wednesday raised the possibility of a military strike to thwart Tehran's presumed nuclear weapons ambitions, speaking aggressively even as he admitted having been unwise to have done so previously about Iraq.
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Probe underway into cause of deadly Sudanese plane crash (World, 11 articles)
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Up to 120 people were feared dead after a Sudan Airways plane with 217 people on board veered off the runway and burst into flames shortly after landing at Khartoum airport in a sandstorm. A Sudanese Airbus carrying 214 people veered off the runway in a thunderstorm and burst into flames late Tuesday, killing dozens unable to escape the inferno. KHARTOUM, Sudan - Abdel-Menem Hassanein remembers the jetliner landing, and then the chaos - the blast of an explosion, flames at the front of the plane, screams and the sounds of passengers uttering their last prayers.
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Nepal's King Gyanendra moves out of palace, home to royal family for 100 years (World, 9 articles)
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Nepal's deposed king, Gyanendra, left the palace in Kathmandu on Wednesday night, a fortnight after parliament ended his 240-year-old dynasty, as political parties prepared to name the president and new prime minister. Vowing to stay in his former realm, Nepal's deposed King Gyanendra moved out of the Narayanhiti Palace in Kathmandu this evening, two weeks after the country's Maoist-led assembly voted to abolish the world's last Hindu monarchy. The man still revered by some as the incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu then swept out of the palace in a black limousine, driving behind an armed police pick-up, and past thousands of onlookers and hundreds of riot police.
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Israeli Cabinet votes to seek truce with militants in Gaza (World, 9 articles)
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A spokesman for the Israeli military said a ground force had attacked militants in the area attempting to fire rockets into Israel. JERUSALEM (CNN) An Israeli airstrike in Gaza killed three Palestinian militants Tuesday following a mortar attack on Israel, according to Israeli army and Hamas sources. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is meeting top military officials and ministers to discuss a possible wider military offensive in the Gaza Strip.
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2 killed in fuel protests in Spain, Portugal (World, 7 articles)
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LONDON - Protests over soaring fuel prices erupted in Asia on Tuesday as truckers in Hong Kong and tire-burning demonstrators in India and Nepal added their angry voices to protests that began last month in Europe. In spite of the government's tough action, unions representing the strikers vowed to press on, rejecting a package of measures presented by the government. One striker died Tuesday when a van drove through a picket line, and a protester died in a similar incident in neighboring Portugal, which has been hit by the same kind of strike since Monday.
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Myanmar says detention of democracy leader legal (World, 5 articles)
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YANGON, Myanmar - Ten thousand pregnant cyclone survivors are in urgent need of proper care in Myanmar, a U.N. expert said Wednesday, as relief agencies again raised concerns about the junta's willingness to accept foreign aid. A Canadian donation is being praised for helping aid workers quickly access villagers in hard-to-reach parts of Burma's Irrawaddy delta still coping with the aftermath of last month's cyclone. Until this week, the United Nations had only one helicopter operating in Burma to help the 2.4 million people the agency estimates were affected by Cyclone Nargis, said Paul Risley
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Bush administration says it may not get Iraq deal this year (World, 10 articles)
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Most Americans don't understand what is going on right now, urgently and secretly, in Baghdad and Washington. BAGHDAD Officials in Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's ruling coalition are questioning whether Iraq needs a U.S. military presence even as the two countries press forward with high-pressure negotiations to determine how long American forces will remain. According to Iraqis, Americans supported a draft of the agreement that called for allowing U.S. forces to detain Iraqis and conduct missions without the government's permission.
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Taiwan-China talks open in Beijing (World, 4 articles)
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The 19-member Taiwanese team is being led by Chiang Pin-kung and includes two vice Cabinet ministers und the highest-ranking Taiwanese officials ever to participate in bilateral talks. BEIJING (AP) und A Taiwanese delegation arrived in Beijing on Wednesday for talks on expanding charter flights between Taiwan and China und the first formal discussions between the sides since 1999. His counterpart , Chen Yunlin, head of Beijing's semiofficial Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait, said the public on both sides was counting on the talks to produce results and alter the often combative tone between the two governments.
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Ex-Vietnamese PM Vo Van Kiet dies (World, 4 articles)
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Former Vietnamese Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet, an economic reformer who led the communist nation away from poverty and isolation and backed the normalization of ties with the United States, died Wednesday. Vo Van Kiet, the architect of Vietnam's transformation from a socialist system to one of the world's fastest-growing market economies, has died aged 85. Kiet, who was prime minister from 1991 to 1997, died in a Singapore hospital, where he was taken Saturday after suffering a stroke, government officials said.
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Military 'run Mugabe campaign' (World, 7 articles)
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" This government will stop at nothing, even starving the most defenseless people in the country - young children - to realize their political ambitions said the ambassador , James D. McGee, in an interview. Documents obtained by the BBC suggest for the first time that the Zimbabwean military is actively involved in running the re-election campaign for Robert Mugabe. More than 60 people have been killed, thousands have been beaten and many more have been driven from their homes in related violence.
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China wins quake lake 'victory' (World, 6 articles)
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The flood warning yesterday said that if the entire barrier collapsed, about 1.2 million people would be ordered to move to higher ground, including some in central Mianyang. In a panic, thousands of soldiers, earthquake survivors and aid workers raced headlong for the hills, some helping babies and old people negotiate a mountain of jagged debris. MIANYANG, China - As China marked Thursday's one-month anniversary of its deadly earthquake, some weary survivors were once again on the move, setting up tents and shelters on city sidewalks away from a threatened flood.
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Serbia arrests top Bosnian Serb war crimes fugitive (World, 4 articles)
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(CNN) Serbian authorities on Wednesday arrested Bosnian Serb war crimes suspect Stojan Zupljanin, an official at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) said. The U.S. government had offered a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to Zupljanin's arrest or conviction. " We have been informed by the Serbian authorities that Stojan Zupljanin has been arrested said Olga Kavran
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Somali Islamic leader snubs UN-backed accord (World, 4 articles)
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MOGADISHU, Somalia - A leader of the ousted Islamic movement rejected a UN-brokered peace deal between the government and an opposition alliance, saying yesterday that the insurgents will fight on. The Somali government and the opposition Alliance for the Reliberation of Somalia agreed Monday to end months of violence and set a timetable for the withdrawal of Ethiopian troops supporting Somalia's fragile government. " The so-called deal is rubbish and inconsequential said Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys, who is on US and UN lists of terrorism suspects.
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blaster@cs.columbia.edu
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