BELGIUM: All’s Fair

The opening of the Brussels World's Fair was only 24 hours away, and, despite seven years of planning and 16 months of frenetic construction, the 470-acre showcase was still a littered building site. “We'll never make it,” muttered a French official—and in fact the French were not ready on opening day.

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BELGIUM: Achille’s Heel

“Smiling Achille” van Acker went to his native Bruges to celebrate 25 years of happy marriage. Then he came back to Brussels to face a crisis in the uneasy union of Socialists, Liberals and Communists which he had held in precarious balance for three months.It was a member of his own Socialist party, Senator Henri Rolin, stubbornly fighting Minister of Justice Adolphe van Glabbeke over a secondary juridical matter, who brought about the downfall of Premier van Acker's Government

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Al Qaeda priority: Western targets

Between late July and early December of 2008 four members of a Belgian-French group returned to Europe from the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region. On December 11, Belgian counter-terrorism police launched one of the largest operations in the country’s history, arrested six people and charged them with participation in a terrorist group.

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Somali PM: Anti-pirate patrols not working

Somalia’s prime minister told CNN Thursday that the international naval patrols in the Gulf of Aden are not solving the problem of piracy in the region. Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke pointed to the recent increase in pirate attacks as evidence, and called for the U.N. arms embargo on Somalia to be lifted so the government can fight back against the pirates and local militant Islamist groups

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Second Swiss bank loses billions

Switzerland’s Credit Suisse has joined the list of banks revealing disastrous results for 2008 after it reported losses of $7.1 billion (8.2 billion Swiss francs). The officials told CNN that the alleged cell had connections to a senior al Qaeda operative who helped orchestrate the 2006 “Airline Plot,” widely recognized as al Qaeda’s most serious terror attempt since the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

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