A Health Care Reality Check Slows Congress

Whether or not health care reform actually passes in the end, this may be remembered as the week that the reality of the challenge such a massive overhaul poses finally dawned on lawmakers. And that reality is this: It’s all about the dollars. Coming up with a bill that doesn’t add to the deficit is turning out to be even harder than members of Congress thought it would be

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N. Korea: U.S. journalists were creating ‘smear campaign’

North Korea’s state media released a "detailed report" Tuesday claiming that American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee entered the country illegally in order to record material for a "smear campaign" against the reclusive communist state. It added that the two women “admitted that what they did were criminal acts … prompted by the political motive to isolate and stifle the socialist system of the DPRK by faking up moving images aimed at falsifying its human rights performance and hurling slanders and calumnies at it.” Ling and Lee were sentenced this month to 12 years of hard labor in North Korea

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Obama to meet South Korean president

North Korea and its nuclear ambitions are expected to be a key part of discussions as U.S. President Barack Obama hosts the president of South Korea on Tuesday. Obama is to meet with President Lee Myung-bak in a closed-door session at the White House on Tuesday morning and then share a working lunch

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World reacts to Iranian election result

Members of the international community have reacted to the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president of Iran and the oppostion protests which have accompanied the result. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a statement Saturday: “We are monitoring the situation as it unfolds in Iran but we, like the rest of the world, are waiting and watching to see what the Iranian people decide

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Israel: Iran results intensify threat

Israel warned Sunday that the apparent re-election of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad represented "an intensification of the Iranian threat," and called for redoubled international efforts to halt its nuclear program. “After Ahmadinejad’s re-election, the international community must continue to act uncompromisingly to prevent the nuclearization of Iran, and to halt its activity in support of terror organizations and undermining stability in the Middle East,” Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said.

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U.S. dad’s custody case returns to Brazilian appeals court

Brazil’s highest court said Wednesday it does not have jurisdiction over who should have custody of a U.S.-born 9-year-old boy — his Brazilian stepfather or his father in the United States. The high court’s ruling sends the ongoing case back to an appeals court in Rio de Janeiro. In the unanimous vote, Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court said it could not rule over The Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, of which Brazil is a signatory.

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