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The US Capitol in Washington, DC, is seen on Feb. 28, 2013. US President Barack Obama summoned congressional leaders Friday in a bid to avert budget sequestration, but Obama was bound by law to initiate the automatic spending cuts on March 1, 2013.

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Graham Allison

See castration: Bills go unpaid — America gets spayed

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Sequestration is a mouthful of Washington gobbledygook. Unfortunately, it is even worse than it sounds. The operation that will take place today was invented by budget wonks working for Congress and the president. Their goal was to create a nightmare so blatantly irresponsible and indefensible that politicians would be forced to act sensibly to escape.

Recalling Samuel Johnson's observation about the impact of the prospect of being hanged in the morning, this would “wonderfully concentrate the mind.”

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People show pictures of missing women during Mexico's 'One Billion Rising' flashmob against violence against women, at the Republic Square in front of the Monument to the Mexican Revolution, in Mexico City on Feb. 14, 2013.

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Mandy Van Deven

Is gender violence getting worse in Latin America?

NEW YORK — "This man will kill me and nothing will happen."

For eight years, Dolores and her children endured severe beatings at the hands of her husband. During the first year of the abuse, she sought help from the local police and prosecutor in Cartagena, Colombia, but was met with accusations and blame. Dolores tried to leave her husband several times, but each time he hunted her down and forced her to return — one time at knifepoint. Finally, Dolores and her children were able to escape for good.

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A former Nepali Maoist combatant holds the Nepalese flag as he marches during a special function at the Shaktikhor cantonment site in the Chitwan District of Nepal, some 170 km south of Kathmandu, on Jan. 22, 2011.

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TP Mishra

Britain’s arrest of Nepali colonel should serve as lesson for South Asia

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Nepal Army Colonel Kumar Lama was arrested Jan. 3, after police raided his home in East Sussex south of London. The arrest was made for his alleged involvement in the torture of two detainees in 2005, during the Nepal government’s war against the Maoist insurgency.

Advocacy Forum Nepal, in coordination with a British law firm, filed the charges on behalf of the victims, whose stories have rarely been covered by mainstream media.

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People walk in a street of Hargeisa, Somaliland, the northern breakaway nation of war-torn Somalia on Oct. 31, 2012. While war rages in southern Somalia — where regional armies and government troops battle Al Qaeda allied Al Shabaab fighters — the relative stability achieved in Somaliland offers a sliver of hope for the rest of the anarchic land.

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Ali Mohamed

US recognition of democratic Somaliland is long overdue

LEWIS CENTER, Ohio — Recently the Obama administration recognized the United Nations-backed nominal Somali government.

The so-called government was the by-product of a UN-sponsored peace process that has been going on for more than 10 years. It involved billions in foreign aid, and some 17,000 African soldiers, who are the proxy of the United States military in Somalia. Yet Somalia is not better off than when the US intervened in the early ’90s.

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The central stadium for the Winter Olympics 2014 is seen through the window of a derelict house in Sochi on Feb. 18, 2013.

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Yulia Gorbunova

Creating Sochi Olympic site comes at high cost for local residents

MOSCOW— Bakinskaya Street is located on a sloping hillside in Veseloye village within the city limits of Sochi, the Russian city where, less than a year from now, the 2014 Winter Olympics will launch.

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Christine Lagarde (C), managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), addresses participants about the global economic outlook for 2012 on Jan. 28, 2012, at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in the Swiss municipality of Davos.

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Bhaskar Chakravorti

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow: The global economy’s path to 2025

Editor's note: "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" is a three-part series on the future of the global economy in 2025. Read part 2: Competitive edge will sustain US economic advantage in 2025; Read part 3: Resource limits and slow-moving institutions may hamper economic growth

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Participants at the World Economic Forum (WEF) chat under a sign on Jan. 25, 2012, at the Congress Center in the Swiss municipality of Davos. The world's political and business elites met with some 40 heads of government for five days to discuss all things related to the global economy.

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Bhaskar Chakravorti

Competitive edge will sustain US economic advantage in 2025

Editor's note: "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" is a three-part series on the future of the global economy in 2025. Read part 1: Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow: The global economy’s path to 2025; Read part 3: Resource limits and slow-moving institutions may hamper economic growth

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What will happen to the global economy in 2025? Some see grim prospects for the future of global economic affairs.

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Bhaskar Chakravorti

Resource limits and slow-moving institutions may hamper economic growth

Editor's note: "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" is a three-part series on the future of the global economy in 2025. Read part 1: Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow: The global economy’s path to 2025; Read part 2: Competitive edge will sustain US economic advantage in 2025

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US Secretary of State John Kerry delivers remarks on foreign policy, highlighting his key objectives, as he begins his duties as secretary on Feb. 7, 2013, at the US State Department in Washington, DC.

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Mac Deford

In North Korea and Middle East, US should rework failed policies

OWLS HEAD, Maine — This past weekend, on Fareed Zakaria's Sunday talk show, the suggestion was made to depart from the endless cycle of reacting to North Korea's provocative behavior with further sanctions, which seems to provoke worse behavior from the world's most sanctioned and isolated country.

Maybe, instead, offering a few carrots, like the prospect of a more normal relationship with the United States and some of North Korea's neighbors, would work better.

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Belarussian soldiers and oficers dressed in Soviet Army and Wermacht wartime uniforms perform a show reproducing a World War II battle at the place called "Stalin's line" in the village of Goroshki, some 35 kms from Minsk, on Nov. 19, 2011.

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Scott Moore

World peace: the most under-appreciated international security issue

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — The very phrase “world peace” has become something of a synonym for naiveté. Yet in recent years, compelling evidence has emerged to suggest that at least one important aspect of world peace, the absence or rarity of war between countries, may in fact be close to a reality.

Scholarly work on what might be called the “decline-in-violence” phenomenon emerged following the conclusion of a surprisingly peaceful Cold War, but it has lately drawn greater popular and scholarly attention.

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