How "Fresh" Is Air Freshener?

Watch enough TV commercials, and you get the sense that Americans are obsessed with air freshener. Trigger-happy women routinely rush around the house armed with cans of the stuff, gleefully spraying running shoes, embarrassed dogs and cigar-smoke-laden furniture; whole families, it seems, are intoxicated by the fresh scent of Summer Breeze or Berry Burst

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Veil Opening: New Rights, and Challenges, for Saudi Women

Like those of its competitors in New York or London, the sleek glass and steel offices of media company Rotana are filled with preening attitude and fashion-conscious staffers: assistants teeter in shoes that might have absorbed much of their monthly paycheck; executives parade the halls in power suits and pencil skirts. But Rotana isn’t in New York or London; it’s in Riyadh, capital of Saudi Arabia, a country in which women normally adhere to a strict dress code in public — a black cloak called an abaya, a headscarf and a veil, the niqab, which covers everything but their eyes.

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Afghanistan’s Bamiyan province struggles to build tourism

Thursday is "Chinese night" at the Hotel Silk Road in Afghanistan’s Bamiyan province. (CNN) — Thursday is “Chinese night” at the Hotel Silk Road in Afghanistan’s Bamiyan province. Hungry guests sip cans of Coke and nonalcoholic beer and pick at a buffet that includes General Tsao’s chicken, egg drop soup and slices of sweet green melon grown in nearby fields.

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The Face of Pakistan’s New Taliban

Already blamed by Pakistan and the CIA for killing Benazir Bhutto, Baitullah Mehsud is just getting started. The articulate, baby-faced commander of the Tehrik-i-Taliban in Pakistan’s tribal wilds along the Afghan border is waging an increasingly coordinated insurgency threatening further destabilization on the eve of parliamentary elections. His forces have embarrassed the Pakistani military in recent weeks by attacking its forts, inflicting heavy losses and seizing weapons before retreating into the mountains of South Waziristan, Mehsud’s home turf

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