Halle Berry describes daughter’s harassment terror

With dozens of journalists tailing her every move, Academy Award-winner Halle Berry appeared at the California Capitol on Tuesday (Wednesday NZ time) to testify for a bill that would limit the ability of paparazzi to photograph the children of celebrities and public figures. “My daughter doesn’t want to go to school because she knows ‘the men’ are watching for her,” the actor told the Assembly Committee on Public Safety

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Should They Stay Or Should They Go?

You wouldn’t think the man who made his mark in Washington as the knight-errant of campaign-finance reform and whose name is rarely written without the word maverick attached would ever meet a cause he deemed hopeless. But that was pretty much where Arizona Senator John McCain was a couple of weeks ago in his quest to transform the nation’s immigration laws and set on the path to becoming citizens the estimated 11 million people who are here illegally

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Wonkbook: Health-care challenge boosted

Wonkbook: Health-care challenge boosted; helping homeowners; House looks at Social Security supplement In Florida, Judge Roger Vinson has decided to let the case against health-care reform go forward. His ruling was only about whether the states have the “standing” to bring the case to court, but he also admonished the Obama administration for calling the […]

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Moussavi, Khatami blast Iran trials

Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Moussavi and reformist former President Mohammad Khatami on Sunday blasted the trials of people arrested in post-election demonstrations. Those on trial had been tortured into confessions, Moussavi said in a statement posted on his Ghalam News Web site. “They have been stepped on so severely that they would have confessed to anything else, had they been instructed to do so,” Moussavi said.

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Target Musharraf: Are Pakistan’s Activist Judges Helping or Hurting Democracy?

When General Pervez Musharraf stepped down as Pakistan’s president last year, he looked forward to a quiet life of golf, lucrative speaking engagements, and evenings clinking glasses and tugging on cigars with friends over a game of bridge. He certainly wasn’t expecting the summons issued on Wednesday by Pakistan’s Supreme Court to appear later this month and defend his November 2007 imposition of a state of emergency — when he sacked the very judges, led by the recently reinstated Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, who are now demanding answers from him. Musharraf’s resort to emergency rule was widely derided as a self-serving move by to stave off political challenges.

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Hatch: Sotomayor ‘highly likely’ to be confirmed, barring surprises

The longest-serving Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee told CNN Radio on Thursday that, barring any surprises, Sonia Sotomayor is headed for a Supreme Court confirmation. “If there are no otherwise disqualifying matters here, it appears to me she will probably be confirmed,” Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah said

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