Is Iran's presence in Latin America a threat? The White House says yes.

When the United states government signed into law the Countering Iran in the Western Hemisphere Act, the US was quickly criticized for being stuck in the past.The law was the White House’s most public strategy to date to counter Iran’s influence in the Americas, and gives the State Department 180 days to draw up a plan to “address Iran’s growing hostile presence and activity.” The US received prompt...

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In Egypt a new cabinet, but same old IMF problem

A senior International Monetary Fund official visited Cairo to discuss the type of concessions Egypt would be willing to make in exchange for a $4.8 billion loan that the government hopes will stem the precipitous decline of the Egyptian pound.The conversation included the new and politically untested Finance Minister al-Mursi al-Sayed Hegazy, a professor of Islamic Finance with no track record in...

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Good Reads: Boomtown slum, democracy in progress, and 'rewilding' in the Netherlands

The image of an African shantytown does not usually conjure up hope for economic prosperity. But Kibera, one of Nairobi’s slums and arguably Africa’s largest slum, is exactly that for the Kenyans who call it home. In The Economist, a writer chronicled a day in Kibera, describing the slum’s ebbs and flows, capturing its entrepreneurial spirit. People from all over Kenya leave their towns and villages...

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Serena offers ominous warning for Australian Open rivals

BRISBANE (Reuters) - Serena Williams felt she was close to accessing the sporting "zone" during her emphatic 6-2 6-1 victory over Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova in the final of the Brisbane International on Saturday.Williams needed only 51 minutes to beat the Russian in an ominous warm-up for the Australian Open, which begins in Melbourne on January 14."I've been in the zone a few times," Williams told...

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Hussey finishes on a high with Australia sweep

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Michael Hussey ended his test career on a high on Sunday when Australia beat Sri Lanka by five wickets with a day to spare in the third test to sweep the series 3-0.The 37-year-old was deprived of the ultimate fairytale ending when his batting partner Mitchell Johnson scored the winning run but Hussey, ever the team man, was not remotely concerned."It couldn't have ended any better,"...

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Penguins' Private Lives Recorded in Antarctica

MCMURDO SOUND, Antarctica — Suppose someone monitors your whole life, from the moment you were born through childhood, puberty, adolescence and your midlife crisis, all the way to your ultimate death — recording what you eat, where you go, who you make love to, when you raise children and how your body ages. Pretty scary, right?But that's exactly what biologist David Ainley is doing. Not with humans,...

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Reports: Margaret Thatcher leaves hospital

LONDON (AP) — British media are reporting that former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has left the hospital after an operation to remove a bladder growth.The 87-year-old former Conservative leader was admitted to the hospital last week to have the operation.The BBC and Sky News said Thatcher was doing well and left the hospital on Saturday to "convalesce privately." Her spokesman did not...

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Spanish police arrest 17 suspected pimps

MADRID (AP) — Spain's Interior Ministry says police have arrested 17 people on suspicion of smuggling Nigerian women into Spain and forcing them into prostitution using threats including claims they would cast Voodoo spells on them if they didn't comply.An investigation began when police detected in January that around 10 women had been brought into the country illegally using a small boat.Police...

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Anglican leader Rowan Williams steps down

LONDON (AP) — The head of the Church of England is leaving office after a decade as the spiritual leader of the world's 80 million-strong Anglican Communion.Rowan Williams, the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury, will be replaced by 56-year-old former oil executive Justin Welby, the Bishop of Durham.The ten years in which the 62-year-old Williams held office saw him struggling to maintain unity within...

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Black boxes examined in fatal Russian plane crash

MOSCOW (AP) — Investigators on Sunday examined flight recorders and other evidence to try to determine the cause of the airliner crash in Moscow that killed five people, an official said.The Tu-204 belonging to Russian airline Red Wings was carrying eight people, all of them crew members, when it careered off the runway Saturday while landing at Moscow's Vnukovo Airport. It went partly into an adjacent...

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Official: Turkey talking to jailed Kurdish leader

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkey is holding talks with the Kurdish rebels' jailed leader to press the autonomy-seeking guerrilla group to relinquish arms and end its decades-long conflict, a senior official was quoted as saying on Sunday.Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's chief adviser, Yalcin Akdogan, insisted in an interview with Taraf newspaper that the discussions were aimed at convincing the Kurdistan...

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Coalition soldier missing in Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — A search is under way in southern Afghanistan for a soldier from the NATO-led coalition, believed to be the first to have gone missing since a U.S. Army sergeant was captured by the Taliban more than three years ago, a military spokesman said Friday.U.S. Army Maj. Martyn Crighton said the soldier was among the 1,560 troops from the former Soviet republic of Georgia serving...

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US budget negotiations setback drives stocks down

PARIS (AP) — A failed attempt find a compromise in U.S. budget negotiations sent global stock markets plummeting Friday, as investors feared the world's largest economy could teeter into recession if no deal is found.Without an agreement, the U.S. economy will fall off the so-called "fiscal cliff" on Jan. 1 when Bush-era tax cuts expire and spending cuts kick in automatically. The measures were designed...

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NKorea says it has detained a US citizen

PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) — North Korea said Friday that an American citizen has been detained after confessing to unspecified crimes, confirming news reports about his arrest at a time when Pyongyang is facing criticism from Washington for launching a long-range rocket last week.The American was identified as Pae Jun Ho in a brief dispatch issued by the state-run Korean Central News Agency in Pyongyang....

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Gunmen kill 11 Pakistanis, Afghans in SW Pakistan

QUETTA, Pakistan (AP) — An official says gunmen have killed eleven Pakistanis and Afghans in a border town of southwestern Pakistan as they were trying to cross to Iran to travel on to Europe as illegal migrants.Local government official Zubair Ahmed said Saturday the shooting took place late Friday in the Sunsar town of southwestern Baluchistan province.He said the dead and wounded were Afghans and...

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People flee Japan nuke disaster to faraway Okinawa

NAHA, Japan (AP) — Okinawa is about as far away as one can get from Fukushima without leaving Japan, and that is why Minaho Kubota is here.Petrified of the radiation spewing from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant that went into multiple meltdowns last year, Kubota grabbed her children, left her skeptical husband and moved to the small southwestern island. More than 1,000 people from the disaster...

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