Iranian opposition leader’s office raided, shut down

Iranian authorities raided and shut down the offices of opposition leader Mehdi Karrubi, an Iranian news agency reported Tuesday, one day after another prominent reformer’s office was raided. Brandishing a court order, representatives of the prosecutor entered the building in the Tehran neighborhood of Jamshidieh at 3 p.m., a spokesman for Karrubi’s party said, according to the Iranian Labor News Agency

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Swiss banks expect to avoid witch-hunt

Switzerland’s top private bankers are convinced they can avoid a damaging witch-hunt over their activities by U.S. authorities, in the wake of UBS’s tax row. In interviews with the Financial Times, senior executives of Credit Suisse and Julius Baer, the country’s number two and number three private bank businesses after UBS, both said they were sanguine

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European envoys visit jailed Cuban’s family

European diplomats visited the family of a jailed Cuban dissident Thursday over concern the government has arrested him on criminal charges in a bid to block his political activities. Representatives from Sweden, the current president of the European Union, as well as diplomats from the United Kingdom, Germany, Hungary, and Poland, drove to the Havana home of Darsi Ferrer and talked to his wife. Ferrer has been an outspoken critic of the Cuban government and has even organized small marches to demand improved human rights in Cuba, an unusually bold move

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Terror drill off New York tests agencies against seaborne attack

Federal, state and municipal agencies staged an elaborate drill in the waters off New York City on Tuesday to prepare for the possibility of a nuclear or dirty-bomb attack from the water. “We’re a big city, and there are vulnerabilities,” said Ray Kelly, commissioner of the New York Police Department

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The Gnome with the Nazi Salute: Art or a Crime?

Like white picket fences and perfectly manicured lawns, garden gnomes — those colorful residents of front yards the world over — are icons of the suburban ideal: quaint, cheerful and totally inoffensive. But in Germany, one little gnome is stirring up big trouble

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