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BY: Simon Roughneen | ISN Security Watch
Two months after Thailand's army routed the anti-government redshirt protest movement from central Bangkok, 16 provinces including Bangkok remain under emergency law, as the now-dormant redshirt movement goes underground.
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BY: David Usborne | The Independent
Wagons were being hastily circled around Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary-General, last night as top aides absorbed the shock of one of their own blasting him for allegedly thwarting attempts to combat corruption in the world body and leading it into a "process of decay" and "irrelevance".
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BY: Arieh O’Sullivan | The Media Line
Israel is considering allowing Palestinian security forces to join Israeli troops at checkpoints and letting its Jewish citizens back into the Palestinian-controlled areas of the West Bank for the first time in nearly a decade.
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BY: Phil Sands | The National
A flurry of diplomacy in Damascus involving the Syrian president, Turkey’s foreign minister, Iraq’s election winner and an Iranian-schooled radical Iraqi cleric aimed to break through Baghdad’s political deadlock this week and pave the way for a new governing alliance.
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BY: Thomas Erdbrink and Colum Lynch | The Washington Post
Just weeks after the United States and the United Nations imposed new rounds of sanctions on Iran, Tehran's ability to ship vital goods has been significantly curtailed as some of the world's most powerful Western insurance companies cut off Iranian shippers out of fear that they could run afoul of U.S. laws, the insurers say.
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BY: Richard A. Oppel, Jr. and Mark Landler | The New York Times
American, European and other foreign leaders met here Tuesday to pledge anew their support for Afghanistan, agree to entrust it with more spending decisions, and embrace its president’s commitment for Afghan forces to take charge of security by 2014. They acknowledged that neither the public in their own countries nor the Afghan people had much patience left.
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BY: Laura King | Los Angeles Times
Memories of a devastating civil war along ethnic lines have been heightened and fears raised by President Hamid Karzai's bid to reach out to the largely Pashtun Taliban.
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BY: Mary Beth Sheridan | The Washington Post
The financial regulation bill that President Obama will sign into law on Wednesday is supposed to clean up Wall Street. But an obscure passage buried deep in the 2,300-page legislation aims to transform a very different place -- eastern Congo, labeled the "rape capital of the world."
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BY: Jon Rosen | Global Post
It’s three weeks before presidential elections in Rwanda, and news of an opposition leader’s brutal murder is still fresh in the minds of many.
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BY: John F. Burns | The New York Times
After 10 weeks in office, Mr. Cameron, who met with President Obama in Washington on Tuesday, has emerged as one of the most activist prime ministers in modern times, rivaling in some respects even Margaret Thatcher, the “Iron Lady” who as the Conservative leader in the 1980s attacked unions and government bloat while privatizing national industries and vigorously pursuing free-market policies.
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BY: Benjamin Birnbaum | The Washington Times
Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci on Tuesday reiterated that senior Serbian officials had told him they eventually would recognize his country's independence.
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BY: Iason Athanasiadis | Global Post
Fears are growing that Greece is on a path of destabilization after an investigative journalist was gunned down Monday in the latest of a series of high profile terror strikes.
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BY: Valentina Pop | EU Observer
The European Commission has once again slammed Bulgaria and Romania for their persistent corruption, exposure of public funds to fraud, inefficient judiciary and police, criticism that has the two countries worried that their planned accession to the border-free "Schengen" area next spring may be delayed.
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BY: Natalya Krainova | The Moscow Times
The Other Russia, a party led by Kremlin foe Eduard Limonov, managed to get a lengthy manifesto laying out its political platform, including the nationalization of oil and gas, published in the Rossiiskaya Gazeta newspaper on Tuesday, stirring hopes that the opposition might gain a political voice.
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BY: Joanna Lillis | Eurasianet
Kazakhstan has achieved a cherished foreign policy goal, securing a commitment to host an Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe summit this fall.
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BY: Lydia Polgreen and Sabrina Tavernise | The New York Times
Anti-India nationalists and militant networks in Pakistan, already dangerously potent, have seized on the issue as a new source of rage to perpetuate 60 years of antagonism.
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BY: Elisabeth Bumiller | The New York Times
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates clambered up to an observation post in the demilitarized zone here on Wednesday and stared into North Korea, a visit meant to send another signal that the Obama administration was serious about aggression from the North.
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BY: Yuka Hayashi | The Wall Street Journal
Japan's defense minister said Tokyo can't make a decision on a controversial new U.S. military base in Okinawa by an August deadline set less than two months ago with the Obama administration, indicating that the bilateral pact is starting to fray.
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BY: Eleanor Clift | Politics Daily
The last stop on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's Asian tour this week is Vietnam, where she will discuss among other things an enduring remnant of the war, the after-effects of Agent Orange.
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BY: Roque Planas | World Politics Review
Two years ago, former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso led the call for a "paradigm shift" in the country's drug policy. Instead of squelching supply through policing, Cardoso advocated for reducing demand by treating drug abuse as a public health issue.