Iran attacks against U.K. tap into centuries of suspicion

With protests flaring on the streets of Iran, Tehran has singled out one foreign power for particular criticism — and it’s not the one you might expect. There has been criticism of the United States, known in Iran as “the Great Satan” since the Islamic Revolution 30 years ago, but it’s the United Kingdom that Iran’s supreme leader has accused of treachery

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Iranian Politics: Watching ‘The Lord of the Rings’ in Tehran

On June 23, Iranian security forces, reportedly using live ammunition, clashed with protesters numbering in the hundreds in the area of the country’s parliament in Tehran. At the same time, there were indications that a behind-the-scenes struggle was intensifying in the corridors of power even as the government continued its campaign to quiet the populace through propaganda and entertainment.

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Immigration and Marriage: Will Congress End the ‘Widow Penalty’?

It was bad enough that Natalia Goukassian, then 21, had to spend her honeymoon in June 2006 in West Palm Beach, Fla., helping her husband Tigran find alternative treatments for connective tissue sarcoma, an aggressive cancer, or that six months later, the Air Force–enlisted man, 21, succumbed to the disease. But as it turned out, her painful ordeal had only just begun.

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Will Congress Do Away With the Immigration ‘Widow Penalty’?

It was bad enough that Natalia Goukassian, then 21, had to spend her honeymoon in June of 2006 in West Palm Beach, Fla., helping her husband Tigran find alternative treatments for connective tissue sarcoma, an aggressive cancer, or that six months later the Air Force enlisted man, 21, succumbed to the disease.

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Silence grows as tensions mount in Iran

As a tense Tehran awoke Wednesday bracing for more protests, residents in the capital city and elsewhere said they were too afraid to talk about the political crisis over the phone. Residents, worried the government was monitoring phone conversations, said the Internet was the best way to transmit information about the unrest.

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Islamist Rebel Threat Pressures Somalia’s Neighbors Kenya and Ethiopia

If there was any doubt as to the character of the state that threatens to emerge in Somalia should Islamist rebels overthrow the embattled government, it was dispelled on June 22, when a militia court sentenced four men accused of stealing three mobile phones and two AK-47s to the amputation of their right hands and left legs. The sentence, whose execution was postponed after the al-Shabaab court decided the hot weather might cause the four men to bleed to death, was condemned as “cruel, inhuman and degrading” by Amnesty International

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Ambassador visits jailed U.S. journalists in North Korea

The Swedish ambassador met with two imprisoned American journalists in Pyongyang on Tuesday, a state department spokesman said, their first visit with him since a North Korean court handed down their 12-year sentence. The spokesman said he could not provide details of the conversation between the Swedish ambassador and Current TV journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling. The journalists were apprehended in March near North Korea’s border with China and accused of illegally crossing the border and plotting a smear campaign against North Korea

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Clerics join Iran’s anti-government protests

A photo showing Iranian clerics prominently participating in an anti-government protest speaks volumes about the new face of Iran’s opposition movement. In a blatant act of defiance, a group of Mullahs took to the streets of Tehran, to protest election results that returned incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power

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Obama toughens his talk on Iran

President Obama sharpened his language on Iran and stressed the urgency of overhauling the health care system at his news conference Tuesday. “The United States and the international community have been appalled and outraged by the threats, beatings and imprisonments of the last few days

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