Painting prostitutes, Pakistani brushes off religious hard-liners

It’s hot and sweaty in a rat-infested room in Lahore’s historic red light district, a neighborhood of narrow alleyways lined with brothels. A barefoot, long-haired woman is gyrating and twirling on the carpet, to the beat of a four-man band whose drummer sweats profusely as he pounds out a furious rhythm. The dancer, who only gives her first name, Beenish, is performing a kind of Pakistani belly-dance called the mujra

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Americans not losing their religion, but changing it often

Ingrid Case was a devoted church-goer as a child, not only attending Sunday school, but also serving as an acolyte at her Episcopalian church in Greeley, Colorado. “Basically, it’s the priest’s assistant,” she explained. “You carry a cross in front of them, get the things they need to perform the service, scurrying around doing what they need.” But after college, Case drifted away

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Why a Top State Department Nominee is Dividing the GOP

The battle began in late March, when Fox News firestarter Glenn Beck said Harold Koh, Obama’s nominee to be the State department’s top lawyer, supported Muslim Sharia Law. “Sharia law over our Constitution!” Beck said in amazement. When that unlikely charge was debunked, Beck switched tacks and asserted that Koh, the outgoing dean of the Yale Law School and a former official under Presidents Reagan and Clinton, wanted to subjugate the United States constitution to foreign law.

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Israeli anger over anti-racism conference

Israel pulled its ambassador from Switzerland on Monday to protest a planned address by Iran’s president at a controversial anti-racism conference. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman “have decided to call the Israeli ambassador to Switzerland back for consultations, in protest of the conference in Geneva, in which a racist and a Holocaust denier, who openly declares his intention of erasing Israel, is a guest,” Netanyahu’s office announced Monday. Withdrawing an ambassador is a sign of serious displeasure between countries.

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Secretary played dead to avoid New York shooter

Secretary Shirley DeLucia was just doing her job when she saw Jiverly Wong walk through the door of the American Civic Association in Binghamton, New York, on Friday. “Hello,” she said. “Can I help you” Wong, a 41-year-old who had taken English classes at the New York immigration services center, pointed a gun at DeLucia and pulled the trigger

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