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World News |
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HEADLINES:
Earthquake in Pakistan |
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October World Headlines |
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Oct 10th 2005International
aid in the form of everything from doctors to
helicopters has begun pouring into South Asia following
its devastating earthquake. But residents of Pakistani
Kashmir’s flattened capital, Muzaffarabad, are angry at
how slow their government’s response has been
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Both
sides could ensure that the next chance
of peace is missed
TWO doomsdays have,
for now, been postponed. The threat of a return to an
all-out intifada by Palestinian militant
factions, after the heaviest fighting seen this year
between them and the Israeli army, was averted when both
the Hamas and Islamic Jihad factions said they would
return to a ceasefire brokered in March. And the threat
of a split in Israel's Likud party was deferred after
the party's central committee voted narrowly not to
bring forward the leadership primaries that will pit
Ariel Sharon, the prime minister, against his main
rival, Binyamin Netanyahu.
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IRAN's
NUCLEAR THREAT |
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On a roll
Iran's
confidence grows in its nuclear
confrontation with the West
TO THE
uninitiated, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's
maiden speech to the
UN General Assembly on September
14th was a sublime rant by Iran's
hardline president against the
iniquities of American foreign policy.
Behind the revolutionary platitudes,
however, lay an urgent, if elliptical,
appeal. Four days before the governing
board of the International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA)
convenes in Vienna, Mr Ahmadinejad hopes
to prevail on its members to reject
American (and European) efforts to have
Iran's nuclear programme referred to the
UN Security
Council.
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IRAQ's
CHAOTIC SOUTH |
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The
British-controlled southern zone around
Basra was supposed to be calm and fairly
contented. But parts of it have
descended into ugly chaos
BY IRAQ'S recent bloody standards, the violence this
week in Basra, the country's second city and its
southern capital, was small potatoes. A few protesters
were shot dead and a police barracks stormed by British
troops after Iraqi police arrested, and then refused to
release, two of their comrades. Yet it revealed, once
again, the alarming potential for chaos in one of the
country's most peaceable areas—which, all the more
worryingly, happens to be a heartland of the country's
Shia rulers and the repository of most of Iraq's oil.
For America's more embattled troops, under fire in the
Sunni areas farther north, it will be little consolation
to know that if, as is often said, the British are
better-loved by the locals, the love is quickly lost.
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NORTH
KOREA'S NON-DEAL |
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An
agreement with North Korea started to
unravel before the ink was dry. But it
is still better than a break-down
“THE proof, so to speak, is going
to be in the pudding.” Thus America's secretary of
state, Condoleezza Rice, mangling a perfectly good
proverb, but being judiciously cautious about a supposed
agreement this week by North Korea to give up its
nuclear arsenal. That was on September 19th. Within 24
hours, North Korea had made it clear that there had been
little if any real agreement. A resolution of the crisis
surrounding its declared (and possibly hidden) nuclear
weapons programmes appears as remote as ever, though at
least the parties are still talking.
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INDIA AND
AMERICA |
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An
Iranian spanner in the
strategic-partnership works
IT WAS a
short honeymoon. Just two months ago
Manmohan Singh, India's prime minister,
returned home triumphant from a trip to
Washington, DC,
which seemed to have transformed
relations with America. Yet this week,
as Mr Singh arrived in New York for the
UN's General
Assembly, the partners were trying to
make up after their first tiff.
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| Sources Gathered by
Katie Maybee |
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