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Need to know: General Motors announced it has cancelled plans to sell its European car business Opel, including its U.K. brand Vauxhall. GM said it had also come to its decision because of the importance of Opel and Vauxhall to its global strategy. The decision is likely to cause much anger in Europe, where the planned sale of Opel has been dragging on for months.

Want to know: Claude Levi-Strauss, the French anthropologist who transformed Western understanding of what was once called “primitive man” and who towered over the French intellectual scene in the 1960s and ’70s, has died at 100.

Dull but important: A charter meant to transform Europe into a more unified and powerful global player passed its last major hurdle Tuesday and looks set to become law within weeks. Czech President Vaclav Klaus, who has been highly skeptical of increasing the EU's powers, signed the Lisbon Treaty at the Prague Castle.

Just because: Thirty years ago this month, sixty-six Americans were taken hostage at the U.S. embassy in Tehran. Over the next year, misguided foreign policy and disastrous intelligence would take eight American lives, cost Jimmy Carter the presidency, and introduce a different kind of enemy that we've failed to understand ever since. GQ has an oral history.

Wacky: Sacdiyo Sheeq used to love listening to Bollywood movie songs on her mobile telephone. But since hardline al Shabaab insurgents seized the southern Somali port of Kismayu, the 25-year-old's life has changed. "Al Shabaab wants our ringtones to be only a Muslim cleric reading the Hadith or Koranic verse," she told Reuters.

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