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Envoy hands over Pyongyang peace missive to Chinese president
BEIJING - A senior North Korean envoy delivered a letter from his leader Kim Jong-un to Chinese President Xi Jinping and told him that Pyongyang was ready to take "positive action" to re-join stalled six-nation nuclear disarmament talks. The letter was handed over by envoy, Vice Marshal Choe Ryong-hae. Choe told Xi that North Korea is willing to take positive actions to solve problems ...
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UK spy agencies defended over drummer soldier murder
LONDON - The British government has defended its spy agencies for failing to prevent murder of a soldier in London despite signs and revelations that the two suspects were well known to MI5. Communities Secretary Eric Pickles said it was impossible to control everyone all the time. "Peers and MPs will do a thorough investigation in terms of what the security forces knew but I've seen ...
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Vehicles, people plunge into river after bridge collapse
WASHINGTON - A handful of vehicles and some people plunged into a river after a more than half a century old bridge that links Seattle in the US with Canada collapsed, throwing the movement on the highway into disarray. Authorities said there were no deaths in the bridge collapse on the Skagit River in the US state of Washington. Three people were rescued and taken to hospitals, they ...
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Another jewellery heist hits Cannes as $2.6 mn necklace stolen
CANNES - A second suspected jewellery heist was reported at the Cannes Film Festival, with a single necklace by Swiss jeweller De Grisogono worth nearly $2.6 million reported missing. In the case of the first gem loot at the Cannes Film Festival, thieves literally tore out a safe filled with roughly $1 million-worth of jewels from a hotel room. The second time around the event took place ...
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Amnesty laments lack of support for refugees globally
LONDON - Global rights body Amnesty International has said that the world is "increasingly" becoming "dangerous place" for refugees due to inaction on human rights. The London-based group in its annual report cited the increasing number of refugees around the world, and highlighted the lack of support for them, as the key human rights issue for the past year. It said that the number of ...
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June 28 to see News Corp split into two companies
WASHINGTON - Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation Friday announced the planned separation of the $76-billion conglomerate into two distinct publicly traded companies, with one to be renamed 21st Century Fox and the publishing firm to retain the News Corp brand. The split has been formally approved by the Board of Directors. The Company announced appointments to the Boards of Directors of both ...
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Audit records of Chinese firms to be made accessible to US regulators
BEIJING - Chinese regulators Friday announced that they have signed a memorandum of understanding with their US counterparts giving American authorities increased access to documents from Chinese audit firms. The signing of the MOU between China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), the Ministry of Finance (MOF) and the US Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) is a significant ...
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Investments being sought by Croatia for oil exploration in Adriatic Sea
ZAGREB/LONDON - Croatia, soon to become the 28th member of the European Union,- is looking to undiscovered oil and gas fields in the Adriatic Sea to revive its ailing economy, according to the country's president. Ivo Josipovic told CNN that Croatia is searching for partners in the energy sector to help reveal oil and gas "green fields" in the waters that separate the Balkan nations and ...
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Fan fiction authors to find platform on Amazon
WASHINGTON - Amazon, the largest online retailer of books, movies, music and games, Friday offered its Kindle e-book platform to fan fiction authors to sell some of their work. Fan fiction is literature inspired by popular books, shows, movies, comics, music, and games. Publication outside of blogs and online fanzines is often difficult because of copyright issues. Amazon Publishing has ...
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Central bank of China to push forward market oriented reforms
BEIJING - China is planning to steadily push forward market-oriented reform in its interest rates and exchange rates mechanisms this year as part of the financial sector reforms to better serve the real economy, a central bank report said on Friday. The "China Financial Stability Report (2013) released by the People's Bank of China stressed that it would be steadily promoting the interest ...
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IMF warns UK against continuing austerity programme
LONDON - In a critique of the United Kingdom's austerity programme, the International Monetary Fund Wednesday urged the Europe's third largest economy to rebalance the policy to make the transition to a high-investment and more export-oriented economy. "The UK could boost growth by bringing forward measures already included in its fiscal plan, such as spending on infrastructure and job ...
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Bosnia President Freed From Jail
The president of Bosnia's Muslim-Croat federation has been freed from jail following his arrest last month on corruption charges. The Constitutional Court ruled on May 24 that Zivko Budimir and four co-accused aides all be released immediately. Budimir was arrested along with 19 other officials in late April in the most high-profile anti-corruption drive in Bosnia since independence ...
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Anti-Israel activists crash London UEFA event
UEFA: Israel to host tourney despite PA pressure The UEFA dinner was attended by prominent figures including David Beckham and Sir Alex Ferguson, who were reportedly stunned by the incident. Earlier in the day, pro-Palestinian activists from a group called "Red Card Israeli Racism" protested outside a UEFA Congress meeting at a London hotel, according to the report. Friday's ...
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In Syrias shadow Iraq violence presents new test for U.S.
Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki (L) and U.S. President Barack Obama (R) hold a joint news conference in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House campus in Washington, December 12, ...
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Children killed in Pakistan explosion
Pakistani police say a gas-cylinder explosion inside a school bus has killed at least 17 children in eastern Pakistan. Mohammed Rasheed, a police officer, said seven children were also injured on Saturday when the faulty gas cylinder exploded on the outskirts of the city of Gujrat. He says the dead and injured children were going to school at the time. Gujrat is located about 200km southeast ...
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Guatemalas ex-president extradited to US
Guatemala has extradited ex-president Alfonso Portillo to the United States to face charges of laundering $70m. Portillo was put on a plane on Friday under the escort of US agents. "Hasta luego (see you later), people of Guatemala," Portillo, 61, said, after describing his extradition as a "kidnapping" and accusing the Guatemalan government of breaking the law. "They ...
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Life in the cross hairs
>Editor's note: John Sutter, the human rights columnist for CNN Opinion, is from Oklahoma City. Follow him on Twitter -- @jdsutter -- for continued updates about the tornado. E-mail him at ctl@cnn.com. Oklahoma City (CNN) -- Nancy ...
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The Other Benghazi Scandal
Thanks to the solid reporting of The Weekly Standard's Stephen F. Hayes among others, we now have a pretty good picture of how the CIA-prepared "talking points" about the events in Benghazi evolved. A document that initially fingered extremist Islamist groups eventually transmogrified into pabulum that would not contradict Rice's storyline about an attack triggered by ...
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Starving for a Beer
takes in its write-up is glib: Headlined "Kim Jong-Ale," it begins by tossing off a reference to North Korea as a country that "commonly experiences famines." But Thomas, the beer-o-phile, is the real scoundrel here. The first warning sign is that throughout the piece, he refers to North Korea as the "DPRK," the regime's preferred name for the country. (It ...
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Gas cylinder blast on Pakistan school bus kills 17
PESHAWAR, Pakistan - A pair of suspected militant attacks killed nine people in two different areas of northwest Pakistan on Friday, police said.In the deadlier of the two attacks, suspected militants armed with heavy weapons attacked a police convoy in Mattani, 20 kilometers (12 miles) south of the main northwest city of Peshawar, killing six policemen and wounding seven others, said senior ...
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Riots spread outside Swedish capital
A bystander checks the debris around a row of burnt cars in the suburb of Rinkeby after youths rioted in several different suburbs around Stockholm May 23, 2013. (REUTERS/Fredrik Sandberg/Scanpix) STOCKHOLM – A nearly week-long spate of rioting spread outside Stockholm on Friday but authorities said police reinforcements sent to the Swedish capital had reduced the violence there, even ...
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Frantic 911 calls reveal chaos in Okla. following tornado
Several 911 calls made in the wake of Monday's massive tornado in Moore, Oklahoma are now being publicly heard, revealing the chaos that the city's residents had experienced from the devastation. On Friday, recordings of some of the emergency calls were made available by Moore police (click on the video above to hear). One of the frightening calls came from a man describing that a ...
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Lebanon Hezbollah must not spark sectarian conflict
Daily Star reported him saying in reference to Hezbollah fighting in neighboring Syria. Suleimans remarks came following a major assault by Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces on a rebel held town over the past week, which has drawn in fighters from Assad's Shi'ite allies Hezbollah, justifying fears that the conflict would cross borders at the heart of the Middle ...
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Russia Gay Rights Activists To Defy Rally Ban
Activists will attempt to hold a gay pride march in Moscow despite being banned by authorities and warned they will be breaking the law. City officials have promised the action will be "thwarted" and protesters face being arrested and fined. But they say they are determined to make their voices heard. The torture and murder of a young man in Volgograd has focused attention on the ...
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Syria opposition unity talks face specter of collapse
ISTANBUL - Syrian opposition talks aimed at presenting a coherent front at an international peace conference to end the civil war faced the prospect of collapse after President Bashar al-Assad's foes failed to cut an internal deal, opposition sources said on ...
Featuring Birmingham
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Redevelopment of Fair Park at the heart of the budget mess
The city council of Birmingham is facing the difficult task of trying to redevelop a badly run-down part of the city with money that is short, and transforming the local economy to a cleaner one at a time of great recession, yet this must be done if we are to plan for the future.
Birmingham is a city that grew up as a manufacturing hub in the American south. The city was hit badly by the Great Depression, and it wasn’t until after the Second World War that things started to look up. The current situation in Birmingham is no different, although the local economy has diversified considerably since back then, it is still heavily reliant on manufacturing activities. Read more
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