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BY: Anna Dunin | ISN Security Watch
The closing of Lithuania’s only nuclear power plant in accordance with EU requirements will render it dependent on Russian energy and perhaps vulnerable to Kremlin influence.
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BY: Janine Zacharia | The Washington Post
Vice President Biden arrived in Israel on Monday to boost U.S. efforts to mediate talks between Israelis and Palestinians amid criticism that the Obama administration has set back the peace process.
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BY: Rachelle Kliger | The Media Line
The second annual ASDA’A Burson-Marsteller Arab Youth Survey was conducted by the international polling firm Penn Schoen & Berland Associates (PSB) in October 2009 and notes a general high level of optimism among Arab youth with regards to the direction their countries are going.
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BY: David Schenker | The Weekly Standard
The problems of the Party of God, Hezbollah's English translation, started in May 2008, when the militia violated its cardinal rule and turned its weapons -- allegedly intended for use against Israel -- on Lebanese citizens, when the organization invaded Beirut.
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BY: Ned Parker and Raheem Salman | Los Angeles Times
Participation is nearly 75% in Sunni-dominated Salahuddin province. Turnout in Baghdad is lower, possibly dampened by a morning bombardment by militants. Election results are days away.
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BY: William J. Broad | The New York Times
In the Iranian desert, at a sprawling industrial site ringed by barbed wire and antiaircraft guns, a shift in the enrichment of uranium is producing global jitters because it could shorten Iran’s path to the acquisition of nuclear weapons.
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BY: Joshua Partlow | The Washington Post
This sparsely populated swath of desert and scrub brush does not feature prominently in the plans of Afghanistan or NATO to combat the insurgency, despite its 40-mile border with Pakistan and historical importance for the Taliban.
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BY: Aunohita Mojumdar | Eurasianet
Over the past three years, the rights Afghan women have experienced steady erosion. While attacks on girls’ schools and targeted assassinations of Afghan women in public office are attributed to the widening influence of insurgents, there have also been setbacks in the protection and promotion Afghan women’s rights within Afghanistan’s legal framework.
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BY: Adam Nossiter | The New York Times
Officials and human rights groups in Nigeria sharply increased the count of the dead after a weekend of vicious ethnic violence, saying Monday that as many as 500 people — many of them women and children — may have been killed near the city of Jos, long a center of tensions between Christians and Muslims.
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BY: Anthony Faiola and Steven Mufson | The Washington Post
Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou will seek President Obama's support at the White House on Tuesday for a European campaign to crack down on global financial speculation that critics say has exacerbated Europe's worst debt crisis in decades.
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BY: Walter Mayr | Der Spiegel
The EU's new top diplomat Catherine Ashton has only been in office for 100 days, but she is already running into stiff criticism. Her detractors claim she doesn't have enough dedication, stature or independence. But the EU's leaders chose her precisely because she lacked those qualities.
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BY: John Dyer | Global Post
While the United States has yet to scrap its progressive, graduated income tax in favor of a single rate, politicians in Sofia, Bratislava and other eastern European capitals have enthusiastically adopted flat taxes, often to the benefit of their treasuries and, some would argue, their economies.
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BY: Roman Muzalevsky | Eurasia Daily Monitor
Uzbekistan, bordering all the Central Asian republics, is a key link in the Northern Distribution Network (NDN), running supplies from Europe through Russia and the Central Asian states to Afghanistan. Tashkent understands its importance for NATO, and makes every effort to secure more durable cooperation with the West in light of the scheduled troop withdrawal from the war-torn country.
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BY: Alex Anishyuk | The Moscow Times
Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych has won pledges for revitalized ties and tighter economic cooperation, including an invitation to join a Russian-led customs union, during his first official visit to Moscow.
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BY: Paul Goble | Eurasia Review
The Circassians need the kind of ethnic lobby other groups have to set priorities, work with other nations when possible and put pressure on the Russian government when necessary not only to achieve their goals but also to allow the numerous Circassian public organizations to recover their influence rather than continue to fight among themselves.
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BY: Prashanth Parameswaran | World Politics Review
Relations between China and Indonesia have certainly come a long way since the height of the Cold War. Beijing, then reviled by Jakarta as a fomenter of communist insurrection, is now welcomed as a key investor in Indonesia's economic future.
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BY: Richard Lloyd Parry | The London Times
Burma’s military dictatorship has set out laws governing a general election promised later this year, reinforcing the predictions of its opponents that it will be a hollow exercise intended to consolidate military power under a democratic façade.
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BY: Jonathan S. Landay | McClatchy Newspapers
Despite numerous news reports that Pakistan has arrested an American al Qaida operative in the port city of Karachi, the U.S. government is unaware that anyone affiliated with the terrorist network, American or otherwise, has been captured in Pakistan recently, U.S. officials said Monday.
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BY: Clifford Kraus and Elisabeth Malkin | The New York Times
The national oil company created after the 1938 seizure, Pemex, is entering a period of turmoil. Oil production in its aging fields is sagging so rapidly that Mexico, long one of the world’s top oil-exporting countries, could begin importing oil within the decade.
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BY: Martin Arostegui | The Washington Times
Accusations by Spanish authorities that Venezuela aided an alliance between Basque and Colombian terror groups that plotted joint attacks in Colombia and Spain have revived a debate over Venezuela's possible role as a state sponsor of terrorism.