Venezuela to help Nicaragua after U.S. rebuff

Venezuela has promised to give Nicaragua $50 million to replace money that the United States said this week it would withhold from the Central American country, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega Saavedra said Saturday. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez promised the aid after Ortega learned that the United States was canceling $62 million of aid that was to have come from the Millennium Challenge Corporation, a U.S.-government-funded anti-poverty fund set up by former President George W

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The Sacrifice Gap

In his Inaugural address, Barack Obama summoned Americans to a “new era of responsibility” and challenged us to end the politics of “standing pat … and putting off unpleasant decisions.” It could have happened. If there was ever a President sitting on a high enough mountain of political capital to lead the country through a series of very painful but necessary political decisions, it is Obama

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Obama says U.S., Turkey can be model for world

President Obama said Monday that the United States and Turkey can send a powerful message to the world through their friendship. “I have now spent a week traveling through Europe, and I’ve been asked, ‘Are you trying to make a statement by ending this weeklong trip in Turkey’ And the answer is yes,” Obama said during his first state visit to a Muslim nation. Obama said he is trying to make a statement about the importance of Turkey — “not just to the United States, but to the world.” “I think that where there’s the most promise of building stronger U.S.-Turkish relations is in the recognition that Turkey and the United States can build a model partnership in which a predominantly Christian nation, a predominantly Muslim nation — a Western nation and a nation that straddles two continents,” he continued, “that we can create a modern international community that is respectful, that is secure, that is prosperous, that there are not tensions — inevitable tensions between cultures — which I think is extraordinarily important.” Obama said “one of the great strengths of the United States” is that it does not consider itself “a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation

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5 children found slain in Washington state, police say

Five children were found shot to death in a home near Tacoma, Washington, Saturday afternoon, police said. The payload of the rocket remains unclear. North Korea has said the rocket was to carry a satellite into space, but the United States, South Korea and other nations fear it could be a missile with a warhead attached

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