Shah’s Son Backs Iranian Protesters

Thirty years after his father was overthrown by a popular uprising, the former crown prince of Iran has a unique perspective on the demonstrations gripping Iran these days. On Monday, at a Washington press conference, Reza Pahlavi, the onetime heir to the peacock throne, condemned Iran’s controversial presidential election of June 12 as “an ugly moment of disrespect for both God and man” and called on the Tehran regime to allow for “freedom, democracy, human rights [and] the right to choose.” Pahlavi believes that the situation in Iran has eroded dramatically, charging that the issues go “well beyond election.

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U.S. dad’s custody case returns to Brazilian appeals court

Brazil’s highest court said Wednesday it does not have jurisdiction over who should have custody of a U.S.-born 9-year-old boy — his Brazilian stepfather or his father in the United States. The high court’s ruling sends the ongoing case back to an appeals court in Rio de Janeiro. In the unanimous vote, Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court said it could not rule over The Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, of which Brazil is a signatory.

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Brazilian judge suspends order to reunite American boy and father

A Brazilian supreme court judge on Tuesday suspended a lower court’s order that would have given custody of a 9-year-old boy to the U.S. consulate in Rio de Janeiro, where he was to be reunited with his American father. Judge Marco Aurelio argued against taking Sean Richard Goldman from what has been his home for almost five years to the United States “in an abrupt manner.” Doing so, he wrote in his order published on the supreme court’s Web site, could subject the boy to psychological harm.

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After long fight, Vietnam vet gets his due on the Wall

Fifteen years after his death, and after his family fought a very long bureaucratic battle with the government, Enrique Valdez’s name was added to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Valdez was a Marine gunnery sergeant wounded by shrapnel in August 1969, combat that left him a quadriplegic

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Holy Union: Polish Monk Pens Divine-Sex Guide

Sex in marriage does not need to be practiced with lights off; it can be “saucy, surprising and fantasy-packed” and at the same time without sin, says a monk in a book that has become a best seller in predominantly Catholic and conservative Poland. In Sex As You Don’t Know It: For Married Couples Who Love God, published in April, Franciscan Father Ksawery Knotz offers theological and practical advice for married couples who want to spice up their sex lives, all the while assuring them they are doing nothing wrong.

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Taliban attack NATO trucks in Pakistan

Taliban militants attacked NATO supply terminals Wednesday morning, torching at least 10 supply trucks in northern Pakistan, local officials said. It was on August 11, 2006, just 13 days short of his twelfth birthday. “I went with my dad to take food for some people who were stuck in Smaiya,” he explains

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