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Time
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May 29, 07 7:50 AM CDT
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Just weeks after Pope Benedict XVI decried contraception as a threat to the future of Latin America on his visit to Brazil, Brazil's president announced that the government would subsidize birth control pills at private pharmacies so poor women can have "the same right that the wealthy have to plan the number of children they want."
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Associated Press
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May 24, 07 7:36 AM CDT
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Fidel Castro says he's on a steady road to recovery, finally off IVs and holding his weight, almost a year after a series of operations on his digestive system. In a statement emailed to reporters today, the 80-year-old Cuban president didn't mention if or when he might return to office.
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New York Times
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May 24, 07 7:10 AM CDT
(Newser) -
China is launching its own space program, after years of getting a cold shoulder from NASA. Beijing is developing satellite technology for developing nations—the same nations it's looking to for resources to fuel its runaway economic growth, the New York Times notes. Last week saw the launch of a communications satellite for Nigeria, with another planned for Venezuela.
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Los Angeles Times
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May 17, 07 8:08 AM CDT
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In its battle against drug traffickers, the Mexican army fights not just the cartels but also a lethal combination of corruption, power vacuums, and even geography. Desertion rates are high, salaries low, and the assignment difficult if not impossible. The LA Times visits Apatzingan, a drug-war hotspot whose police chief was shot in an ambush this week and promptly resigned.
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Baltimore Sun
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May 16, 07 12:14 PM CDT
(Newser) -
A 27-year-old Pakistani says he has been tortured since being moved last year from a CIA jail to the Guantanamo Bay detention center. Majid Khan, who once lived in Maryland, denies belonging to Al-Qaeda, but he was transferred to Cuba in September with 13 other "high-value" operatives after being in custody since 2003.
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CNN
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May 14, 07 6:58 AM CDT
(Newser) -
Pope Benedict XVI blamed both capitalism and Marxism for Latin America's problems in a speech yesterday in Brazil, the world's most Catholic nation. Benedict blamed Marxism for "a painful destruction of the human spirit," but also worried that capitalism gives rise to "degradation of personal dignity through drugs, alcohol and deceptive illusions of happiness."
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BBC
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May 11, 07 7:39 AM CDT
(Newser) -
Up to a million spectators will flock to Sao Paulo today to see Pope Benedict XVI canonize the first saint born in Brazil. Friar Galvao, a Franciscan monk who died in 1822, wrote Latin prayers on slips of rice paper that he rolled into "pills," which appeared to cure diseases. Followers still take the pills at a Sao Paulo monastery.
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Washington Post
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May 11, 07 6:26 AM CDT
(Newser) -
Democrats have struck a deal with the White House that beefs up labor and environmental standards in pending free-trade pacts, clearing the way for agreements with Peru, Panama, South Korea, and Colombia. Provisions will be written into future deals banning forced labor, child labor and workplace discrimination, the Washington Post reports.
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Boston Globe
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May 9, 07 3:50 PM CDT
(Newser) -
Pope Benedict brought the Catholic Church's stern anti-abortion message to Brazil today, weeks after Mexico City legalized the practice and as Brazil faintly contemplates doing the same. The Pope is on his first trip to Latin America—the fastest-expanding corner of his flock, but also one of the most precarious—this week.
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Los Angeles Times
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May 7, 07 10:00 AM CDT
(Newser) -
A mob of some 20,000 Mexicans stormed the capital yesterday morning not to protest, but to show off their birthday suits. The stark-naked crowd pranced around Mexico City's historic plaza as part of a giant photo shoot orchestrated by New York–based photographer Spencer Tunick, a well-known buff of everything in the buff.
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New Republic
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May 3, 07 3:15 PM CDT
(Newser) -
The U.S. prison at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan is as bad as Guantanamo, reports Eliza Griswold in the New Republic . Prisoners are kept in barbed-wire cages, beaten, tortured, raped, and held without promise of trial. But unlike Gitmo, Bagram has no visiting congressional delegations.
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Miami Herald
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May 1, 07 3:16 PM CDT
(Newser) -
Fidel Castro was a no-show at today's May Day parade in Havana, disappointing Cubans expecting a triumphant comeback appearance. Hundreds of thousands in Revolution Square got only brother Raul, who's been in power since Fidel was stricken by an abdominal ailment nine months ago.
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Wall Street Journal
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May 1, 07 8:32 AM CDT
(Newser) -
Hugo Chávez said yesterday he will pull Venezuela out of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, institutions the leftist leader blames for contributing to poverty in Latin America. Venezuela will also take control of foreign oil projects previously run by multinational companies, some U.S.-based, in a bid to use control over oil to influence world politics.
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