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A leading US-based rights group Tuesday urged the Jordanian government to investigate the alleged torture and arbitrary arrests of suspects carried out by the intelligence department.
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Iraqi lawmakers are set this week to debate a controversial draft law to divide the war-torn country into autonomous regions, after UN chief Kofi Annan voiced fears of all-out civil war.
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Archaeologists excavating a necropolis uncovered by construction workers in Beirut only two weeks before war broke out between Hezbollah and Israel had to stop work this summer when Israeli bombs started falling on the country.
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Drugs, espionage, inter-marriage, and domestic violence, artfully woven with messages of peace, will be beamed into Palestinian homes this Ramadan in a rare local television soap opera.
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In the depths of Cairo's City of the Dead, Umm Essam unveils her latest creation: a blood-red belly-dance costume, complete with golden pearls.
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Recent interventions by actor George Clooney and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel have brought renewed focus on Sudan's Darfur region. Yet Darfur's problem is far from being new or exceptional in Africa.
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Israeli Arab Islamic leader Sheikh Raed Salah told a rally in Jerusalem that the "Israeli occupation" of the city will soon vanish.
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BODYGUARD: Palestinian PM Ismail Haniya's bodyguard aims his weapon at government workers after they try to prevent Haniya from entering the Parliament building in Gaza September 18. Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniya called off a parliame
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The world's first female space tourist launched her multi-million dollar adventure Monday, blasting off with two professional astronauts from the Baikonur cosmodrome bound for the International Space Station (ISS).
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UN nuclear chief Mohammed ElBaradei said Monday that he remained "hopeful" that Iran and world powers would be able to move toward "long-overdue" negotiations over Tehran's atomic ambitions.
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Back in May, the Canadian parliament voted by a narrow margin to extend its troop commitment to Afghanistan until 2009. Not all of those opposed to the motion favored withdrawal, many favoring a fuller discussion of the matter.
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A South Carolina law firm has filed a class-action lawsuit accusing several Arab sheikhs of being involved in enslaving boys to be camel jockeys.
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The Israeli intelligence officer who used Jonathan Pollard to spy on the US Navy in the 1980s now says that the mission was a mistake, reported the Jerusalem Post.
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The CIA and other US spy agencies have given an unprecedented number of highly sensitive jobs to outside contractors, it was reported Sunday.
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An investigation has been ordered into videos posted online that show Australian army troops in Iraq mishandling weapons and illicit behavior.
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The Israeli cabinet voted Sunday to set up a beefed-up government inquiry into the conduct of the Lebanon war after widespread public pressure to investigate the 34-day offensive that failed to achieve its main objectives.
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A contentious French ban on Muslim headscarves in state schools - which came under renewed attack by Al Qaeda this week - seems to be largely accepted in France though some pockets of dissent remain.
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Religious seminaries across Iran shut Sunday to stage protests over remarks by Pope Benedict XVI that linked Islam to violence, as the hardline press scented signs of an Israeli-US plot.
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A month after the end of hostilities, doctors in southern Lebanon continue to treat victims of Israeli cluster bombs, with the plague of unexploded ordnance proving difficult to eradicate.
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With fists flying, 125 Indian policewomen hone their riot control skills before heading to Liberia as UN peacekeepers - the first time that the world body has deployed an all-female unit.
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Two rival Australian television channels Friday were locked in a bitter public battle over their coverage of attempts to save a Papuan orphan called Wa-Wa from being eaten by his cannibal tribe.
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Three rabbis were ordained Thursday in Dresden, Germany, marking another break from the country's Nazi past.
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Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah and rivals Hamas traded demands Friday for a unity government that run the risk of delaying its formation and any subsequent lifting of Western aid embargoes.
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FBI agents responsible for getting a confidant of Osama Bin Laden to betray Al Qaeda's innermost secrets say the Bush administration's rough interrogation tactics employed against other captives since 9/11 are the wrong approach.
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Four bombers and a security guard were killed Friday when Yemeni security forces foiled twin suicide bombings against oil installations, five days before the impoverished Arab nation goes to the polls.
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A general resigns, a colonel is disciplined and a military command battered by an unrelenting storm of criticism: the Israeli army is in disarray as it struggles to cope with the failures of the war in Lebanon.
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Iraqis headed to their mosques for the first weekly prayers of Ramadan Friday under a threat from Al Qaeda to step up attacks in the war-torn country.
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Actor George Clooney and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel called on the UN Security Council to take swift and strong action to end violence in Sudan's Darfur region.
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Once seen by Washington as "the most dangerous man on the planet" but considered a charismatic hero by others, Libya's Colonel Muammar Qadhafi is the main character in a dazzling modern opera in London.
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Iran is expected to answer US charges that it should face UN sanctions for defying calls to suspend uranium enrichment at a meeting Thursday of the watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
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Human Rights Watch (HRW) Wednesday welcomed the decrease in the use of anti-personnel mines in 2005 and this year resulting from the Mine Ban Treaty.
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There is no evidence of a "Gulf War" illness afflicting US soldiers who served in Iraq and Kuwait in the early 1990s, a federal advisory panel concluded Tuesday.
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Japanese researchers say that a type of seaweed containing a compound called fucoxanthin can help burn away body fat. The research done at Japan's Hokkaido University says fucoxanthin is an antioxidant found in wakame, a type of brown kelp used in
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An Egyptian dredger sank in the Suez Canal before dawn Wednesday, leaving two crewmembers dead and two others missing, causing a temporary closure of the major international waterway.
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Kilimanjaro is Africa's highest mountain with some intriguing mysteries that are just now being solved after more than 100 years of scientific study.
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Ten people, including seven children, were killed and 14 injured when a powerful bomb late Tuesday rocked Diyarbakir, the largest city in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast.
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More than 50 people were crushed to death in a stampede Tuesday at an overcrowded stadium in southern Yemen during an election rally by President Ali Abdullah Saleh, a week ahead of polls already marred by violence.
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An Israeli military court Tuesday ordered 18 Palestinian Hamas party members charged with belonging to a terrorist organization to remain in custody for at least 48 hours.
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Gunmen launched a brazen daylight assault on the US embassy in Damascus Tuesday, using grenades, automatic weapons, and an explosives-laden van in a "terror" attack that left four people dead.
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Michael Schumacher will retire as a multiple drivers' world champion, a man of achievements and unequalled statistical records, but dogged by controversy fueled by his most unforgiving critics.
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Universities - both in the United States and in developing countries - can have an important role to play in improving the return on development dollars spent, advocates said this week.
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President George W. Bush Monday wrapped up a day of solemn tributes to the victims of the September 11 attacks with an appeal to Americans divided over the Iraq war to set aside their differences.
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In its discussion of the educational program, the Eritrean government has made a commitment to make education a top priority. It is to be noted that after independence, there were about 186,000 students in Eritrea; but the number significantly incr
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A suicide bomber blew himself up Monday at the funeral of an Afghan provincial governor who was assassinated a day earlier, killing six people including several police, officials said.
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On September 12, 2005, the Israeli army, after 38 years of occupation, withdrew from the Gaza Strip, taking along with it almost 5,000 Jewish settlers who lived in 21 settlements scattered across the coastal strip.
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British Prime Minister Tony Blair pledged help in rebuilding war-ravaged Lebanon during his first visit to Beirut Monday but was confronted by angry protests over his stance on the Israel-Hezbollah conflict.
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Yemen said Monday that negotiations were still underway to try to secure the release of four French tourists a day after they were kidnapped by tribesmen in the country's lawless southeast.
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Osama Bin Laden's number two Ayman Al Zawahiri warned that the Gulf and Israel would be the next targets of Al Qaeda, in a video message coinciding with the fifth anniversary Monday of the September 11 attacks on the United States.
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The man, sweating profusely, pushes a piece of paper through a small grill as tens of others push around him. He whispers, prays, and watches the message fall into the well.
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A month-long ban imposed by Iraq's government on Dubai-based satellite channel Al Arabiya highlights the delicate path that media in Iraq must tread between dangerous insurgents and prickly authorities.
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The September 11 attacks in which 15 of the 19 suicide hijackers came from Saudi Arabia triggered a torrent of US accusations that the Muslim kingdom's education system was fostering Islamic extremism.
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"I only have bad memories of Lebanon," mused a South Lebanon Army (SLA) veteran, a former fighter in Israel's proxy militia now seeking asylum in the Jewish state.
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The space shuttle Atlantis was in top physical shape and with no apparent exterior damage, NASA officials said Sunday, one day after a flawless launch that marked the US space agency's first construction mission since the 2003 Columbia disaster. {/
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Iraqis on Friday observed the last weekly prayers before Ramadan as US commanders warned of fiercer violence during the fasting month than the attacks that killed thousands in July and August.
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The genocide trial of ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein resumed Monday without his defense team, which is boycotting the proceedings in protest against what it branded government pressure on the court.
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A man drove a minibus packed with explosives into an army post in northeast Baghdad Thursday, killing two soldiers in a trend of attacks that US forces say is at an all time high.
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Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki announced an important visit to Shiite neighbor Iran Saturday, as a debate over a plan to divide Iraq into autonomous regions fuelled sectarian tension at home.
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Afghanistan on Saturday commemorated the 2001 assassination of anti-Taliban hero Ahmed Shah Massoud as NATO military chiefs urged member states to send more men and equipment to combat insurgents.
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President George W. Bush has been on the road promoting his ideas in the ongoing war on terrorism.
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Israel was ending its crippling eight-week blockade of Lebanon Friday as a UN-backed flotilla of warships began patrolling the coast in line with a truce that ended Israel's war on Hezbollah.
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Iraq's rival Muslim communities went to their mosques Friday amid fears of new violence after the head of Al Qaeda in Iraq urged the country's Sunni minority to rise up and kill Americans.
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NATO defense chiefs gathered in Warsaw Friday to consider calls to bolster the alliance's force in Afghanistan, as a suicide blast in Kabul killed 13 people, including two US soldiers.
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Israeli President Moshe Katsav was being grilled by police Thursday for a fourth time over mounting allegations of sexual harassment in a spiraling scandal that threatens to end his career.
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Avian-influenza outbreaks in birds have surfaced in four countries in recent days, with Egypt, Indonesia, Cambodia, and Vietnam all reporting incidences of H5N1 infection.
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Iran has announced major developments in its military arsenal, including a sophisticated version of the US F-18 fighter and a new type of guided bomb.
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Prince Zeid Al Hussein, Jordan's ambassador the United Nations, says he is a candidate to replace UN Secretary General Kofi Annan when he retires December 31.
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The four contractors killed in Fallujah in 2004 - an incident that heavily influenced the Iraq insurgency - were led into a trap, according to a new book.
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Question: How tolerant is Australia? Answer: Its tolerance is wearing thin.
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Bombers struck in downtown Baghdad Thursday killing at least seven Iraqis and casting a pall over preparations for the embattled government to at last take command of its own armed forces.
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Austrian teenager Natascha Kampusch said in her first interview since fleeing captivity last month that she focused on escaping for the entire eight years she was held in a basement cell and never abandoned dreams of freedom.
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EU-Iran talks to kickstart negotiations over Tehran's nuclear program and give it a chance to avoid UN sanctions were postponed at the last minute Wednesday, a senior Iranian official said.
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Former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami's visit to the United States is drawing fire there and also from Muslim clerics back home.
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Lebanese and Israeli television aired the first new footage in nearly two decades of Israeli airman Ron Arad, whose plane crashed over Lebanon in 1986 and whose fate remains a cause celebre in Israel.
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A Libyan judge Tuesday adjourned for a week the retrial of six foreign medics accused of infecting hundreds of Libyan children with the Aids virus after a Palestinian defendant appeared without legal counsel.
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A Palestinian teenager and five militants from the governing movement Hamas were killed as Israel pounded the Gaza Strip with fresh airstrikes and launched a new ground operation Wednesday.
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The shuttle Atlantis undocked from the International Space Station Sunday after astronauts successfully installed new solar panels in the first ISS construction work since the 2003 Columbia disaster.
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Yemenis turned out in force in polls that put President Ali Abdullah Saleh to his first real electoral test after 28 years at the helm, with security a concern after the arrest of a suspected Al Qaeda operative that authorities said was planning at
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More than 100 bullet-riddled corpses have been recovered from the streets of Baghdad over the past three days, officials said Friday, amid a sharp spike in sectarian violence in Iraq.
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UN chief Kofi Annan Tuesday warned the Sudanese government that it would be accountable for the humanitarian situation in Darfur if it continued to oppose a foreign presence in the war-torn region.
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Iraq's parliament reopened Tuesday after a month-long recess marred by mounting sectarian violence, with deputies slated to discuss breaking up the country into semi-independent regions.
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A blind man who tried to do a favor for a friend who had lost his license - by driving for him - was convicted in a British court Monday of dangerous driving.
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Iran's hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Tuesday vowed to cleanse schools and universities of liberal influences, continuing a drive to restore revolutionary values to the Islamic republic.
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The president of Tajikistan oversaw the simultaneous marriages of 250 disadvantaged couples in the capital Dushanbe Monday and then hosted a public dance.
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The global debate between scientists and conservative Christians over evolution has hit Kenya, where an exhibit of one of the world's finest collections of early hominid fossils is under threat.
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Anousheh Ansari spent her childhood in Iran dreaming of space. Now, after years of hard work and study in the United States, she is about to realize her dreams and blast off on a Soyuz rocket.
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An investigation into a deadly gun attack on Western holidaymakers in Amman has found that the assailant acted alone and had no support from "terrorist" groups, Jordanian officials said Tuesday.
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Reeling from criticism over the Lebanon war, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert Tuesday scrambled for ways to keep his coalition intact after shelving the main platform on which his Kadima party narrowly won polls less than six months ago.
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The new chief judge in the genocide trial of Saddam Hussein ordered the former Iraqi leader out of court during a stormy hearing Wednesday that also saw the defense team walk out complaining of government interference.
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Three witnesses testified Tuesday in the trial of Saddam Hussein on charges of genocide relating harrowing stories of poisonous gas attacks, and in one case, the stillbirth of a child in an Iraqi prison.
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Tributes flooded in from across the globe Tuesday for legendary Australian "Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin, a day after he died in a freak stingray attack that was captured on film.
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US civil rights leader Jesse Jackson Monday urged Hezbollah officials in Lebanon to offer proof that two captured Israeli soldiers remain alive.
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Israel announced Monday intentions to build 690 multi-unit residential buildings in Gaza.
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A Qatar Airways flight landed at Beirut international airport from Doha Monday despite a continuing Israeli air and sea blockade of Lebanon.
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been voted the world's most powerful woman by Forbes magazine and she is set to even play a greater role in shaping global policy next year.
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Esteemed British architect Lord Foster has been enlisted to carve a canal through the Sinai desert in order to rescue the Dead Sea from environmental damage.
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A small group of ultra-Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem has been attacking members of the ultra-Orthodox community that they consider too lax.
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A Muslim group is up in arms over plans for the 60th birthday of the late rock legend Freddie Mercury on the African island of Zanzibar.
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Britain's Jewish community has been hit by a "wave of intimidation and abuse" in the last few weeks partly as a result of the latest trouble in the Middle East, community representatives said Friday.
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Twenty-nine people were killed Friday when an Iranian airliner caught fire after landing in the northeastern city of Mashhad, Iran's civil aviation chief said, lowering earlier reports of up to 80 dead.
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Eight Israel Defense Forces troops have been hospitalized in Lebanon recently after attacks from scorpions and a snake, The Jerusalem Post reported. {/bold)
