Obama awarded 2009 Nobel Peace Prize

President Obama was awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday. The first African-American to win the White House, Obama was praised by the Norweigan Nobel Committee for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” “Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future,” the committee said

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Merkel eyes new coalition after victory

Re-elected German Chancellor Angela Merkel is eyeing a new coalition to replace the “grand coalition” her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party shared with the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in the previous parliament. If, as expected, Merkel forms a new coalition with the Free Democratic Party (FPD) it will have wide-reaching implications for Germans.

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Target Musharraf: Are Pakistan’s Activist Judges Helping or Hurting Democracy?

When General Pervez Musharraf stepped down as Pakistan’s president last year, he looked forward to a quiet life of golf, lucrative speaking engagements, and evenings clinking glasses and tugging on cigars with friends over a game of bridge. He certainly wasn’t expecting the summons issued on Wednesday by Pakistan’s Supreme Court to appear later this month and defend his November 2007 imposition of a state of emergency — when he sacked the very judges, led by the recently reinstated Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, who are now demanding answers from him. Musharraf’s resort to emergency rule was widely derided as a self-serving move by to stave off political challenges.

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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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Kim Jong Il’s son ‘not interested’ in succession

The eldest son of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, in a rare television interview Tuesday, shed some light on who might eventually take over leadership of the country. Kim Jong Nam told TV Asahi in Macau that he does not care about politics or succeeding his father. “Personally, I am not interested in this issue (succession),” he said in an interview with the Japanese television network.

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