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AP - French President Nicolas Sarkozy will attend the opening of the Beijing Olympics next month, his office said Wednesday, putting an end to his threat to boycott the event over China's treatment of Tibet.

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AP - Even in the chin-high piles of roadside rubble, the crumbled cinderblock and the eerily empty streets of this neighborhood in western Mosul, America's top military officer sees hope. But he also sees peril and an urgent need to get the economy going — jobs, services, some semblance of regular life.

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AP - World leaders embraced for the first time on Tuesday an ambitious but nonbinding goal of slashing greenhouse-gas emissions in half by midcentury to stave off global warming. Unimpressed environmentalists called the effort too slow and too uncertain.

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AP - Sultan al-Mazeen recently stopped at a gas station to fill up his SUV, paying 45 cents a gallon — about one-tenth what Americans pay these days.

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AP - Israeli troops stormed the shopping mall in this West Bank city Tuesday and ordered it to close, saying the popular facility is linked to the militant Islamic Hamas.

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AFP - Luiz Felipe Scolari has warned Chelsea's rivals that he won't pull any punches in the Premier League title fight.

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AP - Iraq's national security adviser said Tuesday his country will not accept any security deal with the United States unless it contains specific dates for the withdrawal of U.S.-led forces.

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AP - Ecuador's government seized three television stations and 195 businesses on Tuesday to collect debts stemming from a bank failure in the 1990s. The economy minister resigned just hours before the takeover.

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Reuters - The United States on Tuesday hailed Sudan's new election law, which paves the way for the first free ballot in 23 years in Africa's biggest state.

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AFP - Leaders of the Group of Eight rich nations were set Wednesday to press major developing powers including India and China to back a G8 offer to at least halve global carbon emissions by 2050.

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AP - Australia's top Roman Catholic cleric has denied trying to cover up a sexual abuse case involving clergy, attempting Tuesday to fight off an embarrassing scandal just days before Pope Benedict XVI arrives for a visit.

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