Independent

The United Nations Security Council will meet today to take up a much-negotiated resolution on Syria, a Western diplomat said.

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A British passenger on the world's biggest cruise ship is missing after falling overboard in the dark as the vessel approached Mexico.

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An extraordinary letter written by an emancipated slave to his former owner ridiculing his request for him to return to work on a Tennessee plantation after the Civil War has become an internet sensation.

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Comrade Duch, the head of a notorious Khmer Rouge prison, was ordered to spend the rest of his life in jail after a tribunal ruled yesterday that he had overseen a "factory of death".

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Listen to Bill Belichick, the most successful NFL coach of the present era, and tomorrow's battle between the New York Giants and his own New England Patriots for the gaudiest prize in American sport has nothing to do with revenge. "This game is about this team, this year," he insists. The past doesn't matter. And anyway, "there aren't really a lot of us who were actually involved in that game."

The UN's highest court confirmed yesterday that Germany has legal immunity from being sued in foreign courts by victims of Second World War Nazi atrocities.

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An extraordinary letter written by an emancipated slave to his former owner ridiculing his request for him to return to work on a Tennessee plantation after the Civil War has become an internet sensation.

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Nicolas Sarkozy has been accused of addressing "fake workers" at a construction site in the Paris suburbs.

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The competitive-eating champion Takeru Kobayashi has a new record – among other things – under his belt after eating 337 chicken wings in 30 minutes, cheered by nearly 20,000 people in Philadelphia.

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Already Australia's richest woman, Gina Rinehart has been tipped to overtake Carlos Slim and Bill Gates as the world's wealthiest person in years to come. But her billions – the proceeds of vast iron ore deposits – have not brought her happiness, judging by a bitter family feud that was exposed this week.

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Russia's most-wanted terrorist, Doku Umarov, has called a halt to attacks on civilians in Russia while anti-government protests continue.

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Margarita Mbywangy has spent her life fighting for the right to exist. At the age of five, she was kidnapped and sold into domestic slavery, removed from her family and the hunter-gather way of life that her Ache tribe had practiced in eastern Paraguay for millennia.

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Military helicopters evacuated stranded residents from flooded towns in eastern Australia yesterday as authorities warned of further flash flooding.

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An exceptional harvest after good rains and food deliveries by aid agencies have ended famine in Somalia for now but food stocks could run out again in May, the United Nations said yesterday.

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Berlin's biggest opera house, the Deutsche Oper, has been forced to backtrack on plans to stage a re-launched version of Adolf Hitler's favourite Wagner opera on the Nazi leader's birthday.

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A charity co-founder who claimed he travelled the world as a "Jewish Indiana Jones" to rescue Torahs has pleaded guilty to fraud charges, admitting that he lied about his exploits.

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The fury unleashed by the deaths of 74 people at a football match in Port Said spread across Egypt yesterday, with at least six people killed in rioting in Cairo and Suez in the east, and 1,500 hurt.

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Forget Newt Gingrich's "Winning our Future" or Mitt Romney's "Believe in America". The snappiest campaign slogan so far this Republican election season greets visitors who step across the threshold of an establishment called the Moonlite Bunny Ranch a few miles outside Carson City, Nevada.

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Further evidence of the extent of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali's wide-reaching financial empire has been revealed after police reportedly seized dozens of luxury items and company shares belonging to the ousted Tunisian leader.

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So, she has gone and done it. Several months after announcing on a late-night talk show that she wanted to run for the highest office in the land – the presidency of the United States – Roseanne Barr, the one-time sitcom star, has formally filed papers seeking to be the nominee of the Green Party in the 2012 race.

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