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Health Secretary Alan Johnson hails England’s smoking ban as a major step forward for public health.
He said the ban on smoking in enclosed public places, which came into force on Sunday, would improve the health of hundreds of thousands of people.
But there have been isolated signs of opposition to the smoking clampdown.
The landlord [...]

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The African Union summit opens in Ghana, focusing this year on the idea of a pan-African government.
Libya’s Colonel Muammar Gaddafi is championing the idea, but many African leaders do not support his initiative.
Some leaders fear the issue will push the crises in Zimbabwe, Somalia and Darfur off the agenda.
Ghana’s President John Kufuor [...]

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Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin died today in the Central Clinical Hospital as a result of a deteriorating cardio-vascular problem.
Boris Yeltsin, who clambered on to a tank to bury the Soviet Union, then led Russia falteringly through its first years of independence, died on Monday aged 76.
World leaders showered Yeltsin with tributes for bringing freedom and democracy [...]

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Riot police beat anti-Kremlin demonstrators in St. Petersburg Sunday in a second day of clashes in Russia as the authorities crushed the attempt of hundreds of demonstrators to stage a march to government buildings at the end of an officially-approved rally on the edge of the city center.Dozens of people were arrested before and during [...]

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People around the world Sunday described seeing the first total lunar eclipse in more than three years.
The eclipse was visible Saturday evening from Europe, Africa, South America and the Eastern United States and Canada, the BBC reported.
At its height, the eclipsed moon looked coppery-red.
Robin Scagell of the Society for Popular Astronomy said the lunar show [...]

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Today’s release of a widely anticipated international report on global warming coincides with a growing clamor within the United States to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and prevent the potentially devastating consequences of global climate change.
“There’s more interest in this now than at any time in the last 20 years,” says Ronald Prinn, TEPCO Professor [...]

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TRY to purge from your mind those oily portraits of a young Cherie Blair working as an artist’s model.
And instead get a load of Veronica Berlusconi. Has she not grace? Has she not chestnut hair? Has she not a magnificent pair of breasts which, for artistic purposes, she displays to good effect in a production [...]

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The Palestinian who blew himself up in the Israeli resort of Eilat on Monday was unemployed, despondent over the death of his baby daughter and driven to avenge his best friend’s killing by Israeli troops, relatives said.Dozens of neighbors celebrated outside 20-year-old Mohammed Siksik’s house after the fiery attack that killed him and three other [...]

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In Somalia, an alleged message from Osama bin Laden’s deputy urging Somalis to launch an Iraq-style guerrilla war against Ethiopian forces there is being taken seriously by a now mostly-disbanded group of militant Somali youths known as the Shaabab. In an interview with VOA Correspondent Alisha Ryu in Mogadishu, one former Shaabab member warns that [...]

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Millions of Romanians and Bulgarians revelled in their first day as citizens of the European Union on Monday, after a night of fireworks and street parties celebrating their countries’ entry into the bloc.
Deemed too politically and economically backward for membership during the EU’s first eastward expansion in 2004, the Black Sea neighbours were relieved to [...]

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Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, hanged for crimes against humanity on Saturday, has been buried in the village where he was born 69 years ago.
“Saddam Hussein has been buried today at 0400 (0100 GMT) in a place that was constructed during his regime in the centre of Awja,” said relative Musa Faraj, quoted by AFP [...]

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