Poor countries must push for a global deal in the stalled World Trade Organization (WTO) talks and not settle for bilateral arrangements, a top Commonwealth official said on Wednesday. Commonwealth Secretary-General Don McKinnon said only the United States and the European Union could afford a total collapse of the talks known as the Doha Round, which deadlocked in July due to an impasse over farm subsidies. Time is running out to conclude the five-year-old talks because the U.S. Bush administration's "fast track" trade negotiating powers, which allow it to broker deals that go to an expedited vote in Congress, expire in June. "The failure of the world trade talks and a retreat to bilateral or regional trade deals is not a solution," McKinnon told a meeting of business leaders in Kenya's capital Nairobi. ... http://abcnews.go.com censor News |
Editor - 08:35:00 01-24-07 |
Noriega set for prison release in September Now 70, former Panama leader plans to fight murder charges back home |
Former dictator Manuel Antonio Noriega hopes to immediately board a plane for Panama when he is released from prison on Sept. 9, and he plans to fight his conviction back home in the slayings of two political opponents, his attorney said. Noriega's eight-year rule over Panama ended after the United States invaded Panama on Dec. 20, 1989, to force him from power. He is being held in the Federal Correctional Institution in Miami on drug trafficking and money laundering charges. Noriega was sentenced to a 30-year term for protecting Colombian cocaine shipments through Panama in the 1980s, but received deductions in his punishment for good behavior. Noriega's release in 2007 was first scheduled more than three years ago. The exact date, Sept. 9, was posted on the U.S. Bureau of Prisons Web site for more than a year ago. "I'd say that is a firm date," Noriega's attorney Frank Rubino said Tuesday... http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16787314/
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Editor - 08:34:00 01-24-07 |
Fighting in Iraq kills U.S. soldier, two Marines |
A U.S. soldier was killed Wednesday by insurgents near the center of Baghdad, while two Marines died in fighting the day before in a volatile province west of the capital, the military said. Insurgents killed the Multi-National Division — Baghdad patrol soldier with small arms fire during a combined security operation in the area, the military said in a statement, adding that two other soldiers were wounded. The death was announced as fighting raged between U.S. and Iraqi forces and Sunni insurgents on Haifa Street, just north of the heavily fortified Green Zone, site of the U.S. and British embassies as well as the Iraqi government headquarters. But military officials declined to give more specifics about the soldier's death or say if it was linked to the clashes pending notification of relatives. The military also announced that two U.S. Marines were killed Tuesday during fighting in Anbar province.... http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2007-01-24-iraq-clashes_x.htm?csp=34
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Editor - 08:31:00 01-24-07 |
U.S. confirms second air strike in Somalia |
The United States this week conducted a second air strike in Somalia, U.S. officials said on Wednesday, as the top U.S. envoy in East Africa met an ousted Islamist leader to press for reconciliation with the government. The new air strike came roughly two weeks after an AC-130 plane killed what Washington said were eight al Qaeda-affiliated fighters hiding among Islamist remnants pushed to Somali's southern tip by Ethiopian and Somali government forces.One official said the targets were from the Somalia Islamic Courts Council (SICC), a militant group defeated by government troops with Ethiopian armor and air power in a two-week war started before Christmas.A second source said the target was an al Qaeda operative. A Pentagon spokesman declined to comment.... http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070124/ts_nm/somalia_conflict_dc
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Editor - 08:27:00 01-24-07 |
Send all troops, al-Qa'ida dares Bush |
TERROR group al-Qa'ida's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has defiantly mocked US President George W. Bush's plan to send extra troops to Iraq, saying he should send his entire army to be annihilated. The online video message coincided yesterday with new intelligence that the former al-Qa'ida leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, planned to send militants to the US on student visas to carry out attacks on US soil. But the plot, which came to light during a raid on an al-Qa'ida safe house in Iraq early last year, never got off the ground and Zarqawi was killed later in an attack by US forces, officials said. Yesterday, al-Qa'ida also claimed to have shot down a US helicopter on Saturday. On Saturday, 25 US troops died, including 12 in the helicopter crash, in one of the highest single-day death tolls since the US-led invasion of March 2003. But the al-Qa'ida claim came only after a US official said the helicopter might have been hit by a shoulder-fired missile.... http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/printpage/0,5942,21108496,00.html
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Editor - 23:45:00 01-23-07 |
Anglicans back right to deny gay adoption |
The Church of England put pressure on the Prime Minister last night over the gay adoptions row with a letter giving warning that “rights of conscience cannot be made subject to legislation”. The Archbishops of Canterbury and York declared on the side of the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster after Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor wrote to every member of the Cabinet stating that the Catholic Church could not accept a law forcing its adoption agencies to accept gay couples.The intervention by Dr Rowan Williams and Dr John Sentamu in a letter seen by The Times places unprecedented pressure on Tony Blair. If he accedes to the demands, he will face accusations from the gay rights lobby and many within his own Government of being a “Vatican puppet”. If he stands by the gay lobby, he risks alienating hundreds of thousands of Catholic Labour voters.... http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2563054,00.html
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Editor - 23:38:00 01-23-07 |
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