Iranian authorities vow to quell protests on key anniversary

The commander of Iran’s security forces warned that police would "strongly confront" anyone planning to protest Thursday, a day that marks the anniversary of a pivotal point in Iran’s reformist movement. In an interview with the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), Maj

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Uganda seeks to ban female circumcision

In many cases it’s a woman that grips the blade — maybe clean, maybe dirty — that cuts a girl’s path to womanhood. The cutter, who works for a fee, can pursue any number of surgical options for the young girl’s rite of passage. She can remove the girl’s clitoris entirely, narrow her vagina with stitches, or make other excisions of the girl’s genitalia.

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GOP says White House sends mixed messages on stimulus

Republicans disappointed with the president’s stimulus plan are expected to hit the Obama administration and Democrats hard Wednesday during a House hearing on oversight of the stimulus spending. Republican lawmakers will accuse the administration of misreading the effectiveness of the stimulus and say the administration has “rigged the game” by using what they call the immeasurable metric of “jobs created or saved,” according to a Republican memo obtained by CNN

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Clinton Helps Push Honduran Foes to Negotiations

If the Latin American left knows anything, it’s the value of political theater. When leftist, coup-ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya tried to return to his country on Sunday in a private jet, buzzing the Tegucigalpa airport before soldiers blocked the runway, many inside the Organization of American States and the Obama Administration considered it a reckless stunt that might hamper a negotiated solution to the crisis. But as it turns out, the aerial spectacle may have aided their cause: it finally coalesced hundreds of thousands of Zelaya supporters on the ground and helped prompt Honduran coup leaders, already facing international condemnation, to reconsider their hard-line stance against any brokered settlement

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South Korean president to donate fortune

Donating to charity itself is a relatively new phenomenon in a society that traditionally values family units. So the announcement that South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak will be donating $26 million, the bulk of his wealth, to charity, is considered highly unusual. The president’s office said the money will be used to set up a new youth scholarship program

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