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I was waiting to buy a ticket to see the new film American Sniper when the guy next to me provided a capsule review. It was a fantastic movie, he told me. The main character, Chris Kyle, was a great guy, and the film really showed what the war over there was like. "And the Taliban are evil," he added. "They were just doing terrible things, using kids to throw bombs and stuff." The...

The man who built the free email encryption software used by whistleblower Edward Snowden, as well as hundreds of thousands of journalists, dissidents and security-minded people around the world, is running out of money to keep his project alive. Werner Koch wrote the software, known as Gnu Privacy Guard, in 1997, and since then has been almost single-handedly keeping it alive with patches and updates from his home...

OSLO, Feb 5 (Reuters) - Norway's government dropped a plan to ban begging on Thursday after opposition parties and rights campaigners said it would criminalize anyone offering help to the poorest people in one of the world's richest nations. The opposition Center Party dropped its previous support of the proposed law, leaving the minority right-wing government -- which has linked begging to rising...

WASHINGTON -- A bipartisan group of U.S. senators pushed Thursday to send arms to Ukraine, saying in a Capitol Hill news conference that the United States needs to send "defensive, lethal" weapons to the country to help stem fresh offensives by Russian-backed separatists. Sending arms would be a step beyond what many European allies support, and the senators offered no estimates of how far Americans should be willing...

Violence often breaks out between religious groups. Yet, it is a mistake to blame religion for violence. Unfortunately, warfare is a universal human potential that would still exist if we were all atheists. Not all societies are warlike, however. Anthropologists contrast the peaceful Shoshone with the more belligerent Paiute in North America for instance. The Shoshone wandered widely in small groups in search...

Nigeria is a promised land; Africa is a great continent; we are marching on; to take our place; among all the nations of the world. This was our marching song at every morning assembly before classes began as elementary school students in the 1980s in Eastern Nigeria. This hymn captured the hope of the founding fathers and mothers of Nigeria about Nigeria's place in both African and world history. More than fifty-four...

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — A Taiwanese commercial flight with 53 passengers aboard clipped a bridge shortly after takeoff and crashed into a river in the island's capital of Taipei on Wednesday morning. Aviation authority director Lin Chi-ming told a news conference that two people were killed. The country's Central News Agency said three people were killed. Footage of the rescue efforts in Taipei. Taiwan's Central...

AMMAN, Jordan (AP) — A Jordanian government spokesman says Jordan has executed two prisoners, including a would-be female suicide bomber from al-Qaida. The executions at dawn Wednesday came just hours after Islamic State militants released a video that purportedly showed a captured Jordanian fighter pilot being burned alive in a cage. Jordan vowed a swift and lethal response. Government spokesman Mohammed al-Momani...