Writing in these pages in early 2008, we put the total cost to the United States of the Iraq war at $3 trillion. This price tag dwarfed previous estimates, including the Bush administration's 2003 projections of a $50 billion to $60 billion war.

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Two Palestinians have been killed in Israeli air raids in the Gaza Strip, medics and security sources say. Another person has been critically injured.

The Israeli army launched three raids in the south of Gaza on Saturday after Palestinian fighters fired a rocket over the border.

The flare-up of violence on the Israel-Gaza border came just two days after the relaunch of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in the US.

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The UN has called an urgent meeting on rising global food prices in an attempt to head off a repeat of the 2008 crisis that sparked riots around the world.

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DUBLIN - Violent skirmishes broke out between protesters and police at the first public signing for Tony Blair's memoirs, with shoes and eggs hurled at the former prime minister.

Three men were arrested after they broke through a security barrier at around 10.45am today outside Eason's bookshop on O'Connell Street in Dublin, Ireland.

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The new confrontation emerged yesterday as BP announced that total costs arising from the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig on 20 April, in which 11 workers died in one the worst environmental disasters in US history, rose by a further $2bn last month to around $8bn.

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The Great Jobs Depression continues to worsen.

The Labor Department reports this morning that companies created ony 67,000 new jobs in August. That's down from the 107,000 they created in July. And because the government laid off temporary Census workers, the economy as a whole lost 54,000 jobs.

To put this into perspective, we need 125,000 net new jobs a month just to keep up with the growth of the population and the potential workforce.

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WASHINGTON - A surprisingly small number of scientists have studied the impacts of the oil spill resulting from the 1979 blowout at the Ixtoc I oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. Wes Tunnell, who first studied the spill's effects in July and August of 1980 and has returned many times since, is one of the few exceptions.

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As the online world continues to expand, Oxford University's Baroness Professor Susan Greenfield has warned excessive screen culture may be changing the way our brains are wired.

The effect of screen culture on the brain is not dissimilar to symptoms associated with attention deficit disorder, such as a shorter attention span and decline in empathy.

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Enbridge Inc. will be investing $185 million to expand its Athabasca oilsands pipeline in time to accommodate new volumes from Cenovus Energy's Christina Lake project, the pipeline giant said.

The announcement Thursday was the second in less than a week about projects in the northeast corner of Alberta.

The newest expansion will boost capacity of the Athabasca pipeline to 430,000 barrels per day when it comes online by the fall of 2013, Enbridge said.

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An explosion Thursday on a Gulf of Mexico oil platform thrust the politics of offshore drilling back in the spotlight, as critics immediately seized on the accident to highlight what they called the industry's inherent dangers.

The explosion and fire happened Thursday morning at a production platform at Vermilion Block 380, about 100 miles off the Louisiana coast, according to its owner, Houston-based Mariner Energy, Inc.

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VIENNA - The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog has invited Israel to consider joining a global anti-nuclear arms pact and to place all its atomic facilities under his agency's inspections, an IAEA report said on Friday.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report said Director General Yukiya Amano met with Israeli leaders during a visit to Israel last month to discuss an Arab-led push for the Jewish state to accede to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

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The organizer of the Rally for Jobs events, The American Petroleum Institute (API), with help from other industry groups including the Independent Petroleum Association of America, the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association and the International Association of Drilling Contractors.

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Peak oil has happened or will happen some time around this year, and its consequences could threaten the continued survival of democratic governments, says a secret Germany military report that was leaked online.

According to Der Spiegel, the report from a think-tank inside the German military warns that shrinking global oil supplies will threaten the world's economic foundations and possibly lead to mass-scale upheaval within the next 15 to 30 years.

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PHOENIX - The U.S. Justice Department sued Sheriff Joe Arpaio on Thursday, saying the Arizona lawman refused for more than a year to turn over records in an investigation into allegations his department discriminates against Hispanics.

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UPDATED...

NEW ORLEANS — A shallow-water production rig in the Gulf of Mexico exploded this morning, causing the thirteen crew members aboard to abandon the structure.

Coast Guard rescuers are en route to the scene of the fire, 90 miles south of Vermilion Bay, Coast Guard Petty Officer Bill Colclough said. Twelve of the workers are in immersion suits, designed to protect them from hypothermia. One is reported injured.

Once plucked from the Gulf, the injured will be taken Terrebone General Medical Center in Houma, Colclough said.

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Hours before peace talks were set to begin in Washington, Jewish settlers defiantly announced plans on Thursday to launch new construction in their West Bank enclaves in a test of strength with Palestinian Islamists.

Naftali Bennett, director of the settlers' Yesha council, said settlers would begin building homes and public structures in at least 80 settlements, breaking a partial government freeze on building that ends on September 26.

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UNITED NATIONS - The number of women raped by rebel groups during last month's raid of more than a dozen villages centred around Walikale, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), has risen to over 240, U.N. officials told reporters here today.

Following the Jul. 30 to Aug. 3 raid, rebels are now believed to have continued pillaging in and around neighbouring areas of Mubi and Pinga: In addition to those previously reported, an additional 75 rape victims have been identified.

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NEW ORLEANS — The cap that ended BP's three-month oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico was set to come off Thursday as a prelude to raising a massive, failed piece of equipment and preparing for a final seal on the broken seafloor well.

Engineers and the government were not expecting crude to break out again when the cap is lifted, but the government wasn't offering any guarantees and oil collection vessels were set to be on standby on the surface just in case.

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The federal government is warning residents in a small Wyoming town with extensive natural gas development not to drink their water, and to use fans and ventilation when showering or washing clothes in order to avoid the risk of an explosion.

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KUNDUZ, Afghanistan - An Afghan official said Thursday that 10 election campaigners had been killed in an airstrike by international forces in the relatively peaceful north of the country.

Two other people, including a candidate in the September 18 parliamentary elections, were injured in the alleged air raid in Rustaq district, in Takhar province, provincial government spokesman Faiz Mohammad Tawhedi told AFP.

The men were travelling in a "caravan" of vehicles when raided by "aircraft and helicopter gunships," he said.

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Greenlandic police arrested the four after high winds buffeted the Stena Don drilling rig overnight, forcing them to abandon mountaineering-style platforms they had suspended by ropes underneath the platform less than 48 hours earlier

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HOUSTON - A federal judge on Wednesday rejected the U.S. government's request to dismiss an industry lawsuit challenging its deepwater oil and gas drilling moratorium, dealing another blow to the Obama administration.

Hornbeck Offshore Services Inc and other drilling companies sued the administration on June 7 after it first ordered a halt to deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico following BP Plc's well rupture that killed 11 workers and caused the world's worst offshore oil spill.

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THE war in Afghanistan is an unwinnable quagmire and poor US intelligence is leading to the deaths of Australian soldiers, a visiting former CIA officer says.

Robert Baer, a decorated CIA field officer of two decades experience who had spent years in the Middle East, said any chances the US and its allies had of defeating the Taliban in Afghanistan had already been squandered. The Coalition was fighting an unwinnable war, he said, and this was the case because victory required reliable intelligence.

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This has not been a kind year for campaign finance reformers.

Setting aside the now-famous Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling from the Supreme Court, which allowed corporations and unions to spend freely on campaign advertisements, there has been a flurry of challenges to other campaign finance laws in the courts.

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STOCKHOLM — A senior Swedish prosecutor reopened a rape investigation against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Wednesday, the latest twist to a puzzling case in which prosecutors of different ranks have overruled each other.

Assange has denied the allegations and suggested they are part of a smear campaign by opponents of WikiLeaks - an online whistle-blower that has angered Washington by publishing thousands of leaked documents about U.S. military activities in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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The Army said yesterday that the results of a depleted uranium study at Pohakuloa Training Area on the Big Island show radiological doses "well within limits" considered safe by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The Army studied the potential health risk posed by residual DU in Pohakuloa areas where past and current weapons firing has taken place.

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The World Food Programme has warned that flood-ravaged Pakistan faces a "triple threat" after the worst disaster in the country's history left eight million people dependent on aid to survive.

Torrential rains triggered massive floods that have moved steadily from north to south over the past month, engulfing a fifth of the country and affecting 17 million of Pakistan's 167 million people.

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WASHINGTON - The US will today send another Predator drone on patrol flights along its border with Mexico, allowing authorities for the first time to monitor the entire frontier with the unmanned aircraft.

National Guardsmen will also arrive at the border this week as part of the Obama administration's plan to strengthen security and combat smuggling.

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