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Xinhua world news summary at 0030 GMT, July 24

Xinhua, July 24, 2015 Adjust font size:

U.S. President Barack Obama has urged Britain to stay in the European Union (EU), saying that having Britain in the bloc "gives us much greater confidence about the strength of the transatlantic union," BBC reported Thursday.

The UK must stay in the EU to continue to have influence on the world stage, Obama said in an interview with BBC. (U.S.-Britain-EU)

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LOS ANGELES -- Scientists using planet-hunting Kepler space telescope have discovered a new catalog of exoplanet candidates and confirmed the first near-Earth-size planet in the "habitable zone" around a sun-like star, NASA announced during a press conference Thursday.

Though NASA said it can't say for sure whether the planet is rocky like ours or has water or air, the newly discovered Kepler-452b is the closest match yet found. Previous research suggests that planets the size of Kepler-452b have a good chance of being rocky. (U.S.-NASA-Discovery)

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PARIS -- French President Francois Hollande and his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani both agreed to reinforce bilateral cooperation following the conclusion of the agreement in Vienna, said Thursday Hollande's presidential office, the Elysee, in a press release.

During a telephone conversation, Hollande and Rouhani examined the conditions of the implementation of the Vienna accord, and agreed to reinforce the bilateral cooperation to assure the implementation of the accord. (France-Iran-Cooperation)

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RAMALLAH -- Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas warned on Thursday of talks that Islamic Hamas movement is holding with Israel on a temporary truce in Gaza.

Abbas told a meeting for his Fatah Party in Ramallah that "this truce is aiming at a geographic separating of the Gaza Strip from the entire territories of the Palestinian homeland," according to the state-run Palestinian agency Wafa. (Palestine-Isreal-Islamic)

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BERLIN -- Economic sanctions significantly hit German exports to Russia in the first five months of 2015 and was expected to cause further damages in the rest of the year, said a business group on Thursday.

From January to May, German exports to Russia slumped by 34 percent compared with the same period of previous year to 4.4 billion euros (about 4.84 billion U.S. dollars), said Germany's Committee on Eastern European Economic Relations, attributing the fall to Western sanctions on Russia for its position on Ukraine crisis.(German-Russia-Sanction) Endi