Obama awards WWII-era women pilots congressional medal

President Obama on Wednesday signed a measure awarding the 300 surviving Women Airforce Service Pilots from World War II the Congressional Gold Medal. The bill passed by both chambers of Congress bestows one of the nation’s highest civilian honors on the group known as WASPs more than 60 years after they were the first women to fly U.S.

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U.N. to discuss Honduras coup as rival presidents seek power

The president of the U.N. General Assembly scheduled a noon session Monday to discuss the situation in Honduras, following a military-led coup that ousted the sitting president. Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann called the Honduran military’s intervention a “criminal action” and U.N.

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3 killed in drive-by at motorcycle fundraiser

Three people were killed and at least seven wounded Saturday in a drive-by shooting at a motorcycle club fundraiser in California, authorities said. The president was arrested at his residence and transported aboard a military plane to an unknown destination, the newspaper La Prensa reported.

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Will Germany’s Army Ever Be Ready for Battle?

On June 15, the German army’s General Wolfgang Schneiderhan found himself in front of an audience of politicians and senior officers defending military policy — on sleeping bags. Many German soldiers “are whingeing to high heaven,” Schneiderhan said at a reception thrown by the parliamentary army ombudsman, complaining about everything from being sent on yet another overseas tour of duty to the “unsuitable” sleeping bags they are given for their deployment in the Congo. Then Schneiderhan did some complaining of his own, noting the tendency for his officers to delegate blame, with no-one taking responsibility for their actions.

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Can the U.S. Deal With a Divided Iran?

“The most treacherous government is Britain,” Ayatullah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, intoned at Friday prayers on June 19, and I had to laugh. The Supreme Leader, in the midst of announcing a crackdown on the Green Revolution demonstrators, was sounding like the lead character in the most famous contemporary Iranian novel, My Uncle Napoleon, a huge hit as a television series in the 1970s

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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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