Honduras accepts mediation offer, Costa Rica says

Provisional Honduran President Roberto Micheletti has accepted an offer that an independent commission help broker an impasse over whether to allow the return of ousted President Jose Manual Zelaya, Costa Rica’s foreign ministry said Tuesday. Costa Rican President Oscar Arias offered to form a mediation panel with representatives from four or five countries. The development came as Zelaya, ousted by the Honduran military on June 28, met in Washington with U.S.

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Honduran government vows to keep deposed president out

Authorities here closed the airport and restricted the airspace over the nation’s capital in anticipation of deposed President Jose Manuel Zelaya’s announced return Sunday. In an interview from Washington with Telesur TV, Zelaya said he was departing for Honduras on a plane with United Nations General Assembly President Miguel d’Escoto.

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Emergency OAS meeting held over Honduran coup

Thousands of protesters demanding the return to power of ousted Honduran President Jose Manuel Zelaya pushed through riot police at Tegucigalpa’s airport and surrounded the terminal Saturday, but there were no reports of violence. The airport continued to operate, CNN Correspondent Karl Penhaul reported. In Washington, the Organization of American States held an emergency meeting Saturday evening to discuss expelling Honduras from the 35-nation hemispheric organization

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Judge Kozinski admonished for explicit items on Web site

A judicial council on Thursday admonished the chief judge of the nation’s largest federal appeals court for having "sexually explicit photos and videos" on his personal Web site, but decided against any further punishment. Judge Alex Kozinski, 58, of the San Francisco, California-based 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals previously apologized and had recommended an investigation because of the public controversy over the material

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Obama awards WWII-era women pilots congressional medal

President Obama on Wednesday signed a measure awarding the 300 surviving Women Airforce Service Pilots from World War II the Congressional Gold Medal. The bill passed by both chambers of Congress bestows one of the nation’s highest civilian honors on the group known as WASPs more than 60 years after they were the first women to fly U.S.

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Argentina’s First Couple face election test

Argentina’s President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner has held power since 2003, and Sunday’s midterm elections will prove pivotal to her hold on power. Much depends on how Fernandez’s husband — and predecessor — Nestor Kirchner fares in his race for a deputy’s seat in the nation’s lower house. Even though he has not been in office since December 2007, some analysts say he remains the most influential political figure in the nation and the person who still makes most important policy decisions for his wife’s government.

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D.C.’s Metro Rail Crash and America’s Aging Transit System

Investigators are still sorting through the wreckage of Monday’s crash of two Metro rail cars in Washington, D.C., the deadliest in the system’s 33-year history, which killed nine people and injured scores of others. Federal officials said on Tuesday that the train that rear-ended another was an older model that lacked equipment that might have helped avert the collision and, according to the Washington Post, had been overdue for needed brake work

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U.S. Stimulus Puts Bullet Trains On the Fast Track

Florida, like many of America’s biggest states, can be frustrating to traverse. Driving between such major cities as Miami and Tampa is a back-numbing haul; flying between them, especially at the exorbitant fares many airlines charge, often seems impractical. And as the peninsula state’s population has exploded in recent years — it’s set to pass New York as the nation’s third-largest — its road and air corridors have become more gridlocked and eco-unfriendly.

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