This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German Government a final note stating that, unless we hear from them by 11 o'clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us.

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During the Cold War, relations between the US and Soviet Union were eased when Cliburn won the first International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1958, at the age of 23.

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"You know very well this is a pretext of a political war between President Basescu and me, a war each of us leads with their own weapons, " he said.

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And the danger in any of these regional disputes is that the US and Russia get sucked in and what began as a war between two neighbours goes global.

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In it he reminds us that, between the mid-17th century and World War I, French was the universal language of diplomacy, culture and fashion and that an ability to read and speak it was essential to anyone claiming to be educated.

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"The war between disparate impact and equal protection will be waged sooner or later, and it behooves us to begin thinking about how -- and on what terms -- to make peace between them, " he concluded.

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He said the "tripartite" system of financial regulation - in which responsibility was divided between the Treasury, the Bank of England and the FSA - had "failed us in war and in peace" and told MPs the government's Financial Services Bill would toughen regulation.

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