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"Christmas greetings from the banana republic called Belgium."
The text message arrived on this correspondent's mobile phone on Monday, sent by a Belgian friend not normally characterized by her interest in politics.
And it put into words a widespread feeling of weariness and deja vu as the country found itself looking...
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 Bayer is illegally selling two aspirin products that make unproven health claims, the Food and Drug Administration said Tuesday.The company said Bayer Aspirin with Heart Advantage and Bayer Women's Low Dose Aspirin + Calcium mislead people, making them believe the two products help combating heart disease and osteoporosis, although none...
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Indian markets recovered their morning losses on Thursday as the benchmark Sensex closed 52.70 points higher after the government said the country's public sector banks will not be affected by the financial turmoil in the United States.
The 30-share-sensitive index, which plunged 5.3 per cent soon after the markets opened, staged a...
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A former leader of Colombia's largest rebel
group has been charged in connection with the kidnapping of three US
contractors who were rescued from the Colombian jungle last month, the
US Justice Department announced Monday. Heli Mejia Mendoza,
known by the alias Martin Sombra, could face up to 60 years in prison
after being...
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A Lake in the Hills man taken into custody last week on illicit possession of a lethal amount of puffer fish toxin was about to gain $5 million from his wife's insurance policy.Edward F. Bachner, aged 35, had a quantity of tetrodotoxin that could kill almost 100 people, informed Chicago Tribune. "That's a lot. It doesn't take much...
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Hedge fund fraud Samuel Israel III was confronted on Thursday with a
new accusation of bail jumping and was sent to prison without delay, the next
day after his mother persuaded him to end his impressive run from justice.
Samuel Israel III, who simulated his own death approximately
one month ago in order to stay away from a 20-year...
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Hedge fund fraud Samuel Israel III confronted on Thursday a
new accusation of bail jumping and was sent to prison without delay, the next
day after his mother persuaded him to end his impressive run from justice.
Samuel Israel III, who simulated his own death approximately
one month ago in order to stay away from a 20-year prison...
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Nicholas Troy Sheley, suspected
of taking the life of 8 people, was apprehended on Tuesday night when he stepped outside a bar
in Granite City, Illinois. He was instantly recognized from
news by two regular customers, Gary
Range and Samantha
Butler, and bartender Jennifer Lloyd. The authorities were immediately alerted.
The...
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The Federal Bureau of
Investigation arrested a Lake in the Hills
man, charging him with possession of tetrodotoxin, a poison found in puffer
fish, usually known as TTX . The culprit had a quantity that could kill almost
100 people, informs Chicago Tribune. "That's a lot. It doesn't take much
to kill," said FBI Special...
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the 144th day of 2008 with 222 to follow.The moon is waning. The morning stars are Venus, Jupiter, Neptune and Uranus. The evening stars are Mercury, Mars and Saturn.Those born on this date are under the sign of Gemini. They include Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus, the father of modern systematic botany, in 1707; Austrian physician...
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On Friday, Russia claimed to have captured a Georgian spy
of Russian citizenship, whose main goal was to destabilize the region in Southern Russia. This represents the proof that the
Georgian secret services are involved in “disruptive terrorist activities” in North Caucasus, as Federal Security Service (FSB)
informed.
It is...
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, the 135th day of 2008 with 231 to follow.The moon is waxing. The morning stars are Venus, Neptune, Uranus and Jupiter. The evening stars are Mars, Mercury and Saturn.Those born on this date are under the sign of Taurus. They include English portrait painter Thomas Gainsborough in 1727; Scottish reformer Robert Owen in 1771; opera...
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the 132nd day of 2008 with 234 to follow. This is Mother's Day. The moon is waxing. The morning stars are Venus, Neptune, Uranus and Jupiter. The evening stars are Mars, Mercury and Saturn.Those born on this date are under the sign of Taurus. They include Ottmar Mergenthaler, inventor of the Linotype typesetting machine, in 1854;...
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the 131st day of 2008 with 235 to follow.The moon is waxing. The morning stars are Venus, Neptune, Uranus and Jupiter. The evening stars are Mars, Mercury and Saturn.Those born on this date are under the sign of Taurus. They include British statesman and scholar James Bryce in 1838; Swiss theologian Karl Barth in 1886; Max Steiner, who...
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 Mexico’s
acting federal police chief Edgar Millan Gomez was shot dead early Thursday
outside his home, the Associated Press reports. He was shot ten times after
opening his door to his Mexico City
apartment complex, where gunmen were waiting for him before dawn, the Public
Safety Department declared. Millan died hours later at a...
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 A federal judge said the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers failed
to protect the city of New Orleans from flooding after Hurricane Katrina,
but dismissed a class-action lawsuit against the agency.
U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval threw out the
class-action suit Wednesday, saying the Corps was shielded from liability under
the Flood...
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 According to a government report released this morning the
rate of close calls between aircraft on the ground approached record highs in
recent years at Los Angeles International and airports around the nation. LAX
also recorded one of the largest total numbers of serious runway incursions.
The findings come despite much-touted...
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 According to a statement released on Thursday by the world’s
web search leader, Google, it was unlikely U.S. antitrust authorities would
seek to impose conditions on its $3.1 billion acquisition of advertising
company Double-Click.
David Drummond, Google's chief legal officer, told reporters
he did not expect the Federal Trade...
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 According to a statement given by federal safety officials
on Wednesday the famous Chinese automobile manufacturer, Toyota, will recall
floor mats from 55,000 Camry and Lexus ES 350 models due to complaints of unintended
acceleration caused by the mats sticking underneath the accelerator pedal.
Toyota Motor Co. will recall...
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 A report released by the US-based
group Human Rights Watch holds responsible Ethiopian, Somali, and insurgent
forces for severe violations of the laws of war that have resulted in
heavy civilian casualties.
The 113-page report called "Shell-Shocked:
Civilians under siege in Mogadishu" refers to the fights...
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 A terrorist attack is the presumed cause of the derailment
of a train that was travelling from Moscow to St. Petersburg that caused the
injury of 60 people. The incident took place on Monday, at 9:38 p.m. (local
hour) at the 179th kilometer from Moscow of the Oktyabrskaya Railway
near Malaya Vishera, according to Viktor Beltsov, the...
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...the 166th day of 2007 with 199 to follow.
The moon is new. The morning stars are Mars, Neptune and Uranus. The evening stars are Jupiter, Mercury, Venus and Saturn.
Those born on this date are under the sign of Gemini. They include Prince Edward of England, son of Edward III and known as the "Black Prince," in 1330;...
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The 165th day of 2007 with 200 to follow.
Today is Flag Day in the United States.
The moon is waning. The morning stars are Mars, Neptune and Uranus. The evening stars are Jupiter, Mercury, Venus and Saturn.
Those born on this date are under the sign of Gemini. They include Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of "Uncle Tom's...
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Washington - The White House has agreed to a 13.4-billion- dollar emergency loan to keep the iconic US car industry alive and avoid an even deeper economic recession in the United States, President George W Bush announced Friday.
The federal funds come with tough conditions. General Motors Corp and Chrysler LLC will have to prove they...
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 On Wednesday, Comcast Corp. said it would work together with Internet phone company Vonage Corp., as it wants to make sure the latter’s service has an easy ride over its broadband network. The two companies are in fact competitors and Comcast has been suspected of fowl play, more exactly, there have some opinions hinting to the fact that...
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 Yesterday, an AT&T attorney, during a talk with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), said that early termination fees (ETFs) are really a great deal. Seamus C. Duffy also presented his audience with an explanation: thanks to the ETFs, customers are given the chance to lower their monthly payments and upfront the cost of...
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 According to The New York Times, a formal antitrust investigation targeting Intel Corp. has been opened on Friday by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The reason was said to be suspicion of anticompetitive conduct.It seems that in the past few days Intel, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and some of the biggest computer makers in the...
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 TiVo Inc. has announced that it will start offering a service which will enable subscribers to download Walt Disney Co. movies from the TV to their broadband-connected DVR hard drives. TiVo already has a movie offer of more than 30,000 titles available through Amazon.com Inc.'s Unbox service, as well as through some other providers. The...
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 The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has received a proposal from the wireless industry that would allow customers to skip the penalty when cancelling their cellular service. This would start either ten days after customers receive the first bill or 30 days after the contract is signed. Following its approval, the proposal...
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 Retailers and consumer
electronics manufacturers have received fines summing up more than $4 million
from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for failure in labeling
outdated television equipment.
According to FCC regulations,
consumers must be informed on the national plans to switch to digital
television signals; once...
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 Soon after the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, D.C., has denied EchoStar its request for a “rehearing en banc” regarding their long standing patent dispute with TiVo Inc., the leader in television products and services for digital video recorders, released a statement expressing their optimism and support for...
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 American Airlines has already cancelled up to 200 MD-80 flights on Saturday, as it declared that it expects to go back to normal operations on Sunday, while working to inspect wiring and repair potential problems.The inspections were necessary in order to ensure compliance with a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) directive, which is...
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 The latest news among the airlines and their problems came from American Airlines, which was forced to cancel over 900 flights on Thursday in order to complete the inspection at its MD-80 fleet.The largest national carrier, American, made its third consecutive day of mass grounding as the company had to fix faulty wiring in hundreds of...
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 Apple Inc. has filed a challenge against a federal trademark registration attempt by GreeNYC, the first saying that the companies’ logos are too similar (see picture in the upper left corner). As company officials put it, the use of such a logo would lead to “consumer confusion resulting in damage and injury” to Apple and would also...
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 United Airlines has become the latest important US carrier to be forced to cancel flights due to the fact that it grounded several planes for safety checks.The airline, which is an unit of UAL Corporation, pulled its fleet of 52 Boeing 777 planes from service on Wednesday for maintenance checks after it discovered that one step in their...
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 J.P. Morgan and Chase Co. announced that they upped the offer for Bear Stearns to 10 dollars per share, four times more than the amount they offered nine days ago, amid rumors that shareholders were planning to reject the previous bid due to the low value.British billionaire Joe Lewis, who has invested around 1.26 billion dollars in Bear...
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 The US Department of Justice has given the antitrust clearance over the merger of Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. and XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. in a deal that is worth 4.59 billion dollars.The Justice Department reached the thumb up decision on Monday, saying that the acquisition of XM Satellite by its rival, Sirius, would not hurt...
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 Soon after J.P. Morgan Chase and Co borrowed money from the New York Federal Reserve in order to lend the troubled investment bank Bear Stearns to keep it afloat, the analysts’ expectations have materialized, as they said the move would cost the bank’s independence.On Sunday, The Wall Street Journal reported that J.P. Morgan Chase and...
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 Southwest Airlines Co announced on Wednesday that it has grounded 44 jetliners due to potential structural problems that were found at a safety inspection. However, the company announced that, following a new inspection, the normal operations would resume as usual.The airline said that the planes were grounded until the low-fare Dallas...
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 The European Commission approved Google’s 3.1 billion dollars acquisition of online advertiser DoubleClick on Tuesday, which is expected to allow the web search leader to implement its advertising expansion plan that was on hold for almost an year.The deal was previously approved by the United States Federal Trade Commission in December...
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 Merck & Company settled to pay over 650 million dollars in order to resolve the allegations that it had overcharged the government for four of its most popular drugs and that it had bribed doctors to prescribe its drugs.The Justice Department announced that the company settled for the two different lawsuits that charged it that it...
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 French authorities held for questioning a trader who has been linked with losses of approximately 7.15 billion dollars (4.9 billion euros) at one of France's biggest banks, media reports said Saturday.Some analysts said the billions in losses may have pushed the US Federal Reserve to slash its benchmark interest rates earlier this...
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 Bank of America is in talks with Countrywide Financial Corp, the top US mortgage lender, whose shares have been falling amid the ongoing subprime mortgage crisis, according to the Wall Street Journal that quoted two unnamed sources.The second largest commercial bank in the United States already acquired a 2 billion dollars stake in...
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 Bear Sterns Cos Inc, the second-largest underwriter of US mortgage bonds, is the latest in a row of finance companies to report losses for the quarter, amid the ongoing credit crisis.In its first loss as a public company, Bear Strearns Cos reported on Thursday losses of 854 billion dollars, much lower than expected, dragged down by the...
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 Microsoft Corporation, Google Inc. and Yahoo! have reached a settlement with the US in order to resolve the charges that they were promoting illegal gambling, according to United States Attorney Catherine L. Hanaway, of the Eastern District of Missouri.The three settlements reached a total of 31.5 million dollars, while Microsoft agreed...
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 The world's biggest maker of computer-networking equipment, Cisco Systems Inc., has announced that it suspended an executive as a cause of charges of tax- evasion of the company by the Brazilian federal authorities.The 60 years old Carlos Carnevali, who was the vice president of Latin America unit of the company for more than two years,...
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 US President George W Bush on Thursday announced a series of steps to
improve delays on US flights ahead of the busy holiday travel season.
"Holiday travelers faced with the prospect of long delayed and
cancelled flights and lost baggage, and other problems have become all
too often an occurrence," Bush said in announcing...
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 In early July, the Dutch Supreme Court ruled that ABN Amro can proceed with selling LaSalle Bank Corporation to Bank of America without consulting shareholders prior to the transaction. This issue went to the Supreme Court after a court in Amsterdam decided to block the sale in May on the grounds that ABN’s shareholders weren’t consulted...
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 Following a string of legal losses, phone chip giant Qualcomm Inc. finally landed a ruling that will allow device makers to import handsets containing the company's chipsets. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit granted a stay on an injunction imposed by the International Trade Commission, which banned the import of wireless...
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 Homebuilding company Beazer Homes USA has received five default notices for five of its senior notes which are due between 2011 and 2016. However, Beazer alleges that it has not met default requirements. Essentially, the trustee says that Beazer has not given copies of its 10-Q report with the Securities and Exchange Commission for the...
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 U.S. Judge John Bates imposed an agreed-upon fine of $300 million each on British Airways Plc and Korean Air Lines Co after they pleaded guilty of a global price-fixing conspiracy. They colluded with rivals on charges for passenger fares and cargo to help ease the impact of sharp increases in fuel prices, and as such more companies will...
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 American Airlines, a unit of AMR Corp, announced it will bring Google Inc to court over its sale of keyword including trademarked terms to other companies. AA filed a lawsuit Thursday in federal district court in Fort Worth seeking unspecified damages. Google Inc did not immediately respond to requests for comment.This is the latest in a...
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 Western U.S. telecommunications carrier Qwest Communications International, Inc.'s former CEO, Joseph P. Nacchio, was slammed with a six year prison sentence in what prosecutors called the largest insider-trading case in history."The crimes of which the defendant has been found guilty are crimes of overarching greed," U.S....
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 Purdue Pharma L.P, the Stamford, Connecticut pharmaceutical company, and three of its executives were ordered by a federal judge on Friday to pay $634.5 million - one of the largest amounts ever paid by a drug company in a similar case - for misleading the public about their main product OxyCotin and especially about the painkiller's...
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 A Washington court Friday rejected Qualcomm's appeal for a patent infringement decision by the U.S. International Trade Commission. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said the 60-day presidential review must first be completed before it can issue a ruling. In the meanwhile, it's out of the Court's jurisdiction."An ITC...
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 A ban was issued June 7 by the U.S. International Trade Commission on phones with chips from Qualcomm Inc, following a litigation with chipmaker Broadcom Corp.. The import ban will not apply to phones that are already in the process of being imported, just to future imports.Qualcomm is to file an emergency stay of the ban at the U.S....
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 A federal expert panel voted unanimously, 14-0, against a controversial weight-loss drug manufactured by Sanofi-Aventis SA, on fears it increases the risk of suicidal thoughts, even in patients without a history of depression.The panel's decision effectively means the FDA will not, by most chances, approve the drug for the U.S. The drug...
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 The war between wireless communications giant Qualcomm and Finnish behemoth Nokia just got worse, with the latter countersuing its American rival for patent infringement in relation with its MediaFLO and BREW businesses."Over the past 19 months Qualcomm has filed 11 patent litigation cases against Nokia seeking damages and...
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 MasterCard Worldwide won in court against its bigger rival Visa International Service Association of San Francisco, California, USA. Manhattan federal judge Barbara Jones ordered VISA to stop charging a special fee that penalized debit card issuers for jumping to MasterCard.Judge Jones wrote in her argument that "because banks make...
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 United States air traffic was severely interrupted due to a computer failure in the control system and thunderstorms, adding to the year's record airline delays, the Federal Aviation Administration said.Eleven major East Coast airports, including New York's LaGuardia and Kennedy, New Jersey's Newark and Teterboro, Dallas' Fort Worth,...
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 The former COO of Enron Corp.'s broadband Internet division, Kevin Hannon, was sentenced to 2 years in prison. The sentence came as a result of his role in defrauding Enron, which led to the giant's collapse. Hannon was COO of Enron Broadband Services from January 2000 to June 2001 and he pleaded guilty in August 2004 to one count of...
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The world's largest oil company, Exxon Mobil Corp., wants to scrap plans for the long-delayed Mackenzie Valley pipeline project unless it can get significant governmental assistance for it. The company said the project isn't profitable."We are now in a situation where it's not economic at current costs," Rex Tillerson, Exxon's...
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 Purdue Frederick Co., the company that makes the powerful painkiller OxyContin and three of its current and former executives pleaded guilty Thursday in federal court to charges of misbranding the painkiller’s prescription.The Stamford, Connecticut-based company and three of its executives, including its president and its top lawyer,...
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Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed on Tuesday appointed a new prime minister, defying a vote by parliament which opposed his decision to sack Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein.
"After I consulted lawmakers, I today appointed Mohamed Mohamoud Guled Ga'madhere as prime minister," Yusuf told reporters in Baidoa, the seat...
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Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed on Tuesday appointed a new prime minister, defying a vote by parliament not to approve his decision to sack Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein.
"After I consulted lawmakers, I today appointed Mohamed Mohamoud Guled Ga'madhere as prime minister," Yusuf told reporters in Baidoa, the seat...
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A Ugandan government official on Friday confirmed that the African Union peacekeeping force in Somalia will pull out should Ethiopia stick to its promise of withdrawing its troops before the end of the year.
"If the Ethiopians pull out ... the AU force will pull out because it will not have adequate numbers," James...
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Piracy in Somalia cannot be defeated by military means alone, and dialogue with pirates is needed to address the root causes of the problem, a Kenyan maritime official said Wednesday as an international conference on piracy got under way.
"Piracy can't be solved by a military solution," Andrew Mwangura, head of the Kenyan...
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At least 17 Islamist insurgents have been killed in a gun battle in the Somali capital Mogadishu, a local government official said Friday.
The battle came as the insurgents attacked the home of Ahmed Hassan Daa'I, the district commissioner of Wadajir, south Mogadishu, in the early hours of Friday morning.
"Today we killed 17...
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Somali pirates have demanded 25 million dollars for the release of a Saudi-owned supertanker seized at the weekend, reports said Thursday.
Mohamed Said, one of the pirates, gave a deadline of ten days for the ransom to be paid, threatening "disastrous" consequences otherwise, Arabic television channel Al-Jazeera...
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At least 26 people have been killed in a wave of suicide car bomb attacks in Somalia, hospital and government officials said Wednesday.
Five near-simultaneous suicide bomb attacks, including one on an Ethiopian embassy and one on a United Nations compound, rocked the breakaway northern state of Somaliland and the semi-autonomous...
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Five suicide bomb attacks, including one on an Ethiopian embassy and one on a United Nations compound, rocked Somalia Wednesday, witnesses and the UN said.
Witness Farhaan Omaye told Deutsche Presse Agentur dpa that three near-simultaneous bombs went off in in Hargeysa, in the breakaway northern state of Somaliland.
The Ethiopian...
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At least 25 people have been killed in a wave of suicide car bomb attacks in Somalia, hospital officials said Wednesday.
Five near-simultaneous suicide bomb attacks, including one on an Ethiopian embassy and one on a United Nations compound, rocked the breakaway northern state of Somaliland and the semi-autonomous state of...
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Somali insurgents have said they will take their fight to Kenya if the neighbouring nation carries out a plan to train Somali government troops.
Kenyan Foreign Affairs Minster Moses Wetangula recently offered to provide training to around 10,000 troops currently taking a hammering in Somalia's bloody Islamist insurgency.
"We...
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Somali Islamist insurgent group al-Shabaab, which last month ordered the closure of Mogadishu's main airport, said Thursday it may allow air traffic to once again land.
"Our decision to close the airport is not Holy Koran verse; we can change our decision to close the airport if the people come to negotiate," Sheikh...
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Tensions are rising at the sprawling Dadaab refugee camp complex in North-West Kenya as a massive influx of Somali refugees fleeing a brutal insurgency across the border stretches the facilities to breaking point, a UN official said Thursday.
The complex, made up of three separate camps stretching over 50 square kilometres, now hosts...
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The presence of international warships has provoked a gunbattle that led to three Somali pirates being shot dead aboard a hijacked Ukrainian cargo ship carrying tanks, a maritime official said Tuesday.
"There was a shootout because of a misunderstanding between the gunmen," Andrew Mwangura of the East African Seafarers'...
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Three warships are hemming in Somali pirates who hijacked a Ukrainian cargo ship carrying tanks and other military supplies, a US Navy official said Monday.
"There are now three ships in the vicinity," Lieutenant Nathan Christensen, Deputy Spokesman for the US Navy's fifth fleet, told Deutsche Presse Agentur dpa.
The MV...
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German authorities attempting to end the kidnapping crisis in which 19 people were snatched in the Egyptian desert a week ago have said that they have no new information regarding their whereabouts or condition, it emerged on Friday.
The group, which consists of 11 tourists - five Germans, five Italians and one Romanian - plus eight...
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Pirates have seized a Ukrainian cargo ship carrying military tanks off the coast of Somalia, a maritime official said Friday.
"The ship was grabbed yesterday evening as it sailed to (the Kenyan port of) Mombasa," Andrew Mwangura of the East African Seafarers' Assistance Programme told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
"It...
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| At least 13 civilians died and more than 35 were wounded during the latest round of heavy fighting between Islamic insurgents and African Union (AU) peacekeepers in the Somali capital Mogadishu, witnesses and official | | | |
