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Obama unveils high-speed passenger rail plan

President Obama unveiled his administration’s blueprint for a new national network of high-speed passenger rail lines Thursday, saying such an investment is necessary to reduce traffic congestion, cut dependence on foreign oil and improve the environment. The president’s plan identifies 10 potential high-speed intercity corridors for federal funding, including California, the Pacific Northwest, the Midwest, the Southeast, the Gulf Coast, Pennsylvania, Florida, New York and New England. It also highlights potential improvements in the heavily traveled Northeast Corridor running from Washington to Boston, Massachusetts

U.S. envoy to press Israel on two-state solution with Palestinians

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Afghanistan to change controversial ‘rape’ law

The Afghan government will change a law that critics say legalizes rape within marriage for Shia Muslims, President Hamid Karzai told CNN Thursday.

Obama addresses economy, tax plan on filing day

President Obama touted his tax cut Wednesday as an important component of his plan to right the U.S. economy and put working families on a more prosperous path. “My administration has taken far-reaching action to give tax cuts to the Americans who need them while jump-starting growth and job creation in the process,” Obama said

Obama heads to Mexico amid escalating drug violence

President Obama travels to Mexico on Thursday as the United States’ neighbor to the south continues to wrestle with increasingly deadly drug wars. Obama recently announced a crackdown on border violence and on the smuggling of cash and weapons into Mexico — a step that could mark an end to a blame game over where responsibility for the violence lies. The president recently designated three Mexican organizations, which he says are involved in drug trafficking, to face hefty financial sanctions under the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Wednesday.

‘Robust action’ could curtail piracy, expert says

Both the United States and France pulled off-high profile rescues in the waters off the Horn of Africa in the past week, killing a total of five pirates to free hostages who had been holed up for days. While those operations gained international attention, there have been dozens of attacks so far this year. Experts say it will take an international effort to combat the rising number of attacks.

Police: Taliban executes eloping lovers

Taliban gunmen executed a young couple for trying to elope in rural Afghanistan, a local police chief told CNN Tuesday. Citizens Against Government Waste is out with its annual “Pig Book” — a list of lawmakers whom the group considers the most egregious porkers, members of the House and Senate who use the earmarking process to funnel money to projects on their home turf. Fittingly perhaps, the list includes nearly $1.8 million for swine odor and manure management research in Iowa

Washington Wrestles the Somali Pirate Problem On Land

The celebrating over Sunday’s daring rescue of Richard Phillips, the ship captain held hostage by Somali pirates, didn’t last too long at the Pentagon. Defense Secretary Robert Gates acknowledged Monday that the kind of Navy snipers who took out the three captors are only a stopgap way of dealing with pirates now sailing the Gulf of Aden. “There is no purely military solution to it,” Gates told an audience of the Marine Corps War College in Quantico, Va.

Castro wants more from Obama on Cuba

The U.S. policy shift toward Cuba makes no mention of the "harshest of measures" — the economic blockade — former Cuban leader Fidel Castro says. U.S

Marilyn Chambers, the Ivory Snow Porn Star, Dead at 56

People in the ’70s knew two things about Marilyn Chambers: that she had appeared as a model on an Ivory Snow box, fondly holding an infant under the corporate slogan “99 and 44/100% Pure”; and that she starred in Behind the Green Door, one of the first, weirdest and most popular hard-core movies in that brief period of the ’70s known as Porno Chic. These two factettes, with their colliding irony, made the blond, willowy Chambers the pin-up princess of XXX cinema, a notoriety she parlayed into a career in soft- and hard-core sex films that lasted from 1972 until..