Are the U.S's. of A just another Bananarepublic...?
The cliffhanger presidential election in the USA could be decided by
late Thursday, a state elections supervisor told CNN television
Wednesday after Florida began its automatic recount. With the U.S.
presidency hanging in the balance, Florida's recount will decide the
final outcome of the national vote, which hinges on 25 electoral
college votes. Al Gore has 260 college votes compared to 246 for
George W. Bush. The winner of the election is the first to reach
270. Vice President Al Gore retracted his concession to Republican
George W. Bush earlier after Bush's 50,000 vote lead in Florida
dwindled to just 1,800, forcing an automatic recount under state
law. Most television networks had declared Bush as the winner but
later said it was still too close to call. Al Gore is leading by
more than 200,000 votes in national popular vote with nearly all
votes counted. The race to the White House could even by decided by
about 3,000 overseas postal ballots. Meanwhile it has emerged that
2,500 votes were recorded falsely to Pat Buchanan instead of Al
Gore, according to an unconfirmed report from an electoral
supervisor in a district in southern Florida.
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The European Court of Human rights has opened a hearing into the
conviction of Egon Krenz, East Germany's last Communist ruler, who
was imprisoned for his involvement in the shoot-to-kill policy at
the Berlin Wall. This led to the death of a number of East Germans
during the Cold War. Krenz was sentenced to 6 and a half years in
1997, on manslaughter charges, by a Berlin court. The 63-year-old
began his jail sentence in January after losing appeals against his
sentence. Krenz maintains he was only following orders from Moscow.
Krenz, who succeeded Erich Honecker as head of state and leader of
the Communist Party, opened the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989.
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The German cabinet has, as expected, approved an application to ban
the right-wing extremist National Democratic Party NPD. A government
spokeswoman told reporters the cabinet had agreed to submit the
application to the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe in its
original form. The Upper House of parliament is to decide on Friday
on its own application for a ban. The Lower House will take a
decision on the issue next month. Interior Minister Otto Schily said
he would explain the government initiative to the general public
later today
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Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak has told world leaders he would be
ready to accept the creation of a viable Palestinian state provided
it was not born out of violence and was negotiated with Israel.
It was the fourth time Israel, which has security control at
the airport, had closed the facility since the outbreak of nearly
six weeks of violence which has killed at least 180 people, most of
them Palestinians.
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The German air force has flown out another group of Palestinians,
mostly youths, who were injured in the recent violence in the West
Bank and Gaza Strip. A total of 27 wounded and family members were
on board the airbus aircraft. On Tuesday a group of 23 Palestinians
were flown from Gaza airport to Cologne/Bonn airport in Germany,
this follows a pledge by German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of
humanitarian aid to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.
