&hearts Many other nations such as India and Israel and Pakistan long ago had women Presidents or Prime Ministers: Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton embarked on a widely anticipated campaign for the White House on Saturday, a former first lady intent on becoming the first female president. "I'm in and I'm in to win," she said on her Web site.
Clinton's announcement, days after Sen. Barack Obama (news, bio, voting record) shook up the contest race with his bid to become the first black president, establishes the most diverse political field ever.
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&hearts Except for the Italians during the Rennaisance, most politicians are tasteless barbarians: Art critics and politicians could not conceal their scorn yesterday at the new official portrait of Gerhard Schröder, the former Chancellor of Germany, which is to be hung alongside the more conventional pictures of his predecessors in the Berlin Chancellery. “There are statues of Elvis Presley that look like this,” sneered Holger Liebs of the Süddeutsche Zeitung. “Siberian oligarchs and Californian rappers have a need — alongside their collection of Rolex watches — to immortalise themselves in this manner.”
He suggested that the image — dubbed the “Golden Gerhard” — could be put on to a medallion, in the manner of Lenin badges, and be presented to Social Democratic party members.
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&hearts Usually, bloody despots die of old age unlike their victims (this includes Ronnie Reagan and Gerald Ford): Cuban leader Fidel Castro is battling to save his life, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has said.
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&hearts Global warming isn't all about fun in the sun: Many venomous reptiles are moving into residential and business areas in search of moisture. Last week a 16-year-old boy in Sydney died from a bite by an Eastern Brown, one of the world's deadliest snakes.
Many parts of Australia have been hard-hit by the drought, described as the worst for more than 100 years.
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&hearts In the spirit of 'workers of the world unite', activists demonstrate on behalf of the poor and oppressed: Thousands of anti-globalisation protesters have marched in Kenya's capital, Nairobi, at the opening of the annual World Social Forum.
More than 80,000 people have gathered to address a wide spectrum of social problems facing the world, including a focus on African issues.
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&hearts Armenian activist/reporter slain in Turkey, the Armenian Christian struggles against Ankara rage for 100 years: Istanbul Governor Muammer Guler said on Friday that three people were detained in regard to killing of Hrant Dink, editor-in-chief of bilingual Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos.
"There are three detainees. We have solid evidences. We have been conducting the investigation in accordance with statements of eyewitnesses. Experts are working on footage and documents," Gulerwas quoted by the semi-official Anatolia news agency as saying.
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&hearts I find it most amusing the Chinese light up the tunnel to look like it is outside, blue sky and trees: An 18-kilometer-long, double-tube and four-lane highway tunnel, the longest double-tube highway tunnel in the world, opened to traffic on Saturday in northwest China.
The Zhongnanshan highway tunnel, which begins in Qingcha, Xi'an City and ends in Yingpan, Shangluo City in Shaanxi Province, allows vehicles to travel up to 80 kmh.
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&hearts After flexing their outer space military muscles, China continues diplomacy initiatives: Canadian finance minister Jim Flaherty met with the Chinese finance minister Jin Renqing here on Friday.
Flaherty said that China and Canada are facing many opportunities and both governments are working together to take these opportunities. Canada has become an important energy provider and a center for science technology. China is an economic giant. So the need for cooperation between China and Canada is obvious.
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&hearts And now China is taking aim at our addiction to adding IOUs to their FOREX funds: Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said that China would steadily push forward the foreign exchange rates reform and actively explore and expand the use of foreign exchange reserves, Xinhua learned Saturday from the Third National Financial Work Conference.
The closed-door meeting was designed to chart the course of China's financial sector.
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&hearts China is one of the top three trade nations on earth: China's Ministry of Commerce has projected a 15-percent growth for foreign trade in 2007, down nine percent from last year.
The figure means that the country's total imports and exports would break the two trillion U.S. dollar mark this year.
China, the world's third largest trader after the United States and Germany, registered 1.76 trillion U.S. dollars in foreign trade and an aggregate trade surplus of 177.47 billion U.S. dollars last year.
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&hearts As the computer industry relocates to China and India, eventually the design work follows:The first batch of 80 computers powered by home-grown Chinese CPUs are undergoing user tests, Wu Shaogang, a manager from manufacturer Lemote Technology Co. told Xinhua on Thursday.
The computer, which uses a Linux operating system, comes with a 40-gigabyte hard drive and 256 megabytes of memory. It costs 1,599 yuan (about 200 U.S. dollars), and users have to buy the monitor, keyboard and mouse separately, the company said on its website.
Godson II E was developed by the Institute of Computing Technology (ICT) under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
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&hearts Now that the cancer epidemic caused by nuclear bomb tests is fading, we have new possible sources of cancer possibilities:A mass study of the long-term impact of mobile phones is to be undertaken amid fears that people who have used them for more than ten years are at greater risk from brain cancer.
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&hearts Click here to see amazing pictures of Comet McNaught: On Jan 18th, "motorists in Bloemfontein, South Africa, stopped to look at a strange 'bush fire' on the horizon," reports photographer Gerrit Penning. "It turned out to be the extravagant tail of Comet McNaught!"
Even experienced astronomers have never seen anything like it--a sweeping fan of comet dust visible to the unaided eye despite city lights and twilight. Steve Crane sends this Jan. 19th picture from Cape Town, South Africa:
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&hearts Humans ate all the Neanderthals and homo habilis relatives: Armed rebels have begun slaughtering and eating protected mountain gorillas in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), conservationists reported this week.
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&hearts Even as humans eat the last gorillas, Californians fight off black bears:Black bears across North America are becoming addicted to human comforts, from snacking on "junk food" found in garbage bins to sleeping in the crawl spaces under designer homes. Relocating problem bears can be difficult, and in many communities the animal invaders are routinely shot.
Catch some marauding bears in the act, and go on assignment with a volunteer in California who hopes that "hazing" bear house crashers will keep them away from humans and save them from an untimely end.
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