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BY: Julian E. Barnes and Greg Miller | Los Angeles Times
U.S. drones are providing intelligence and surveillance video in support of Pakistan's offensive in South Waziristan, the first time Islamabad has accepted such help for major military operations.
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BY: Edward Cody | The Washington Post
Europe's latest step toward a more united future, which seemed at hand after long delays, has become bogged down over a forgotten chapter from the continent's bloody past: the expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia after World War II.
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BY: Alissa J. Rubin | The New York Times
The serious fraud that clouded the credibility of Afghanistan’s presidential election last summer is unlikely to be repeated on the same scale in the runoff set for Nov. 7, but it cannot be altogether eliminated, said Afghan and international officials here as they scrambled to prepare for the vote.
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BY: Michael Theodoulou | The National
Iran yesterday angrily denied Israeli media assertions that senior nuclear officials from the two countries held confidential talks last month in what was portrayed as the first direct exchange between the two arch enemies for 30 years.
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BY: David M. Dickson | The Washington Times
Iraqi leaders facing increasing internal pressure to ramp up oil production and rebuild their war-ravaged country converged on Washington this week to encourage foreign investors to help finance reconstruction costs estimated to be $400 billion.
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BY: Warren P. Strobel | McClatchy
The $736 million new U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, which American diplomats have occupied for 18 months, contains "multiple significant construction deficiencies," and the U.S. government should try to recover more than $130 million from the contractor who built it, according to a report released Thursday.
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BY: Michael Slackman | The New York Times
Once a second-tier opposition figure operating in the shadow of Mir Hussein Moussavi, his fellow challenger in Iran’s discredited presidential election in June, Mr. Karroubi has emerged in recent months as the last and most defiant opponent of the country’s leadership.
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BY: Mohammed Ibrahim | The New York Times
The nation’s most feared Islamist insurgent group, the Shabab, attacked the nation’s main airport with mortars here on Thursday as the president prepared to board a plane to Uganda, Somali officials said.
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BY: Peter Baker | The New York Times
Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. used a visit to Romania on Thursday to hail Eastern Europe on all that has been accomplished in the 20 years since the Iron Curtain fell and to challenge the countries of the region to serve as models for other emerging democracies.
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BY: James Calderwood | The National
Kuwait signed a defence agreement with France on Wednesday that analysts say will cement growing French influence in the Gulf and help to finalise the sale of Rafale combat jets to the emirate.
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BY: Emrullah Uslu | Eurasia Daily Monitor
The Enlargement Strategy Paper stressed that the accession negotiations with Turkey have reached a more critical stage, requiring a new impetus for implementing reform. The paper notes that the pace of Turkish reform is often too slow.
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BY: David Gibson | Politics Daily
If you are going to pick a fight with anyone, it's not a bad move to choose an opponent who is already weakened. And, for good measure, make him an Anglican whose sense of Christian charity and British manners will make him reluctant to counterpunch, at least in public.
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BY: Dierdre Tynan | Eurasianet
The European Union appears poised to lift its four-year arms embargo against Uzbekistan. EU officials say strategic necessity is exerting pressure on Brussels to fully engage Tashkent. Critics, however, contend that by compromising on principles, the European Union is sacrificing long-term interests for immediate, but likely fleeting gains.
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BY: Ali Wyne | World Politics Review
As the People's Republic of China celebrated its 60th anniversary, many observers understandably used the occasion to advocate strengthened cooperation between China and the United States. However, the substance of bilateral cooperation depends considerably on the balance of power between the two countries.
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BY: Colum Lynch | The Washington Post
The State Department's top war crimes official called on Sri Lanka on Thursday to conduct a "genuine" investigation into allegations of war crimes by Sri Lankan troops and Tamil rebels during the bloody final months of the country's 25-year-long civil war.
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BY: Terry Lacey | Asia Sentinel
The saga of the 255 Sri Lankans stuck on a boat in the Indonesian port of Merak last week involves at least five countries: Sri Lanka, where they came from; Australia, where they said they were going; and Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia where the people-smugglers coordinated logistics so passengers could join the boat by air and road.
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The Economist
With America’s economy in tatters and China’s still growing fast (albeit not as fast as before last year’s financial crisis), many politicians and intellectuals in both China and America feel that the balance of power is shifting more rapidly in China’s favour.
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BY: Peter Gelling | Global Post
As the names of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s revamped cabinet began to leak Wednesday, it became clear that the liberal former general would not wield his overwhelming mandate in the manner everyone had hoped.
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BY: Julia Whitty | Mother Jones
Few countries have as much to lose from global climate change as India. The nation's water supply is largely dependent on rainwater from the Asian Monsoon and meltwater from Himalayan glaciers. Both are severely threatened in a changing climate.
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BY: Sibylla Brodzinsky | The Christian Science Monitor
Colombian authorities have long been targeted with violence from right-wing paramilitary groups, drug cartels, and leftist rebels involved in the country's decades-long civil war. But Supreme Court justices here are facing a new flurry of threats as they proceed with a huge effort to investigate, prosecute, and convict dozens of lawmakers who allegedly colluded with paramilitaries in the "parapolitics" scandal.