Iran: Dog Ownership to Be Outlawed Under Lawmakers’ Plan

For much of the past decade, the Iranian government has tolerated what it considers a particularly depraved and un-Islamic vice: the keeping of pet dogs. During periodic crackdowns, police have confiscated dogs from their owners right off the street; and state media has lectured Iranians on the diseases spread by canines.

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‘Buy This Satellite’: Ensuring Internet and Texting Access in Egypt

When the Egyptian government blocked Internet access and mobile texting capabilities in an attempts to thwart protesters’ ability to organize, Kosta Grammatis had new ammunition to pitch his big idea: what if there was a satellite service for Internet and phone — affordable for the average Egyptian — that could not be shut off?

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Bobby and Ethel Kennedy’s Brood: The Weight of Legacy

In the golden years, at a dinner party for the Duchess of Devonshire, Ethel Kennedy slipped in a worldly addendum to the grace she said before the meal. “And please, dear God, make Bobby buy me a bigger dining-room table.” It was an understandable plea from the mistress of Hickory Hill, the Robert Kennedy family’s child-beswarmed antebellum homestead in McLean, Va

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A Past Flight May Offer Clues to Air France 447

We’ll never know what it was like to be aboard Air France Flight 447 as it plunged into the Atlantic Ocean on May 31, apparently killing all 228 aboard. For now, the closest we may get is listening to the passengers on a similar Airbus 330 jet whose flight computer put it into an uncommanded dive over northwestern Australia last October

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