Jolie opens Afghanistan girls’ school

Angelina Jolie has opened an all-girls school in Afghanistan. The Hollywood actress-turned-humanitarian funded the opening of a primary school in a village just outside of Kabul where refugees are rebuilding after the collapse of the Taliban regime, E! News reported.

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Who Can’t Stop the Rain: Colombia’s Very, Very Wet 11 Months

In the novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, a five-year-long downpour imprisons people in their homes, washes away the banana plantation and reduces the town of Macondo to ruins. But the deluge dreamed up by Colombian novelist Gabriel Garca Mrquez in his magical-realist masterpiece pales compared to the real-life flooding of his homeland now.

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Arming Libya’s Rebels: A Debate in Doha

Guns, money, oil, and an ex-spy chief slinking in the shadows: that’s what it came down to Wednesday in Qatar’s capital Doha when the NATO-led alliance marshaling air strikes on Libya gathered to defend its actions and brainstorm on how to help a ragtag rebel army finally dethrone Colonel Muammar Qaddafi. The coalition dismissed recent criticism and claims of inner discord with an early statement that the “international community remained united and firm in its resolve.” The same statement boasted that the alliance’s “efforts to date had exerted significant pressure on Gaddafi, protected civilians ..

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Humanitarian Intervention: Whom to Protect, Whom to Abandon

Death and taxes are always with us, and so are arguments about whether nations ever have the right or duty to intervene in the affairs of others. The case for “humanitarian intervention,” under a variety of names, has been asserted at least since the great powers threw their weight behind Greece’s struggle for independence in the 1820s, but in its modern form was developed during the Wars of the Yugoslav Succession, when it appeared to many that armed force was the only way to end terrible atrocities.

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