Sepp Blatter, the all-powerful don of FIFA; Dilma Rousseff, the president of Brazil; and Pelé, the legendary soccer star; are three extremely different people. But they all share the same perspective about the demonstrations rocking every major city in Brazil: Don’t even think about blaming the World Cup.

As Dilma said in her nationally televised address, “Brazil, the only country to have participated in every World Cup and a five-time world champion, has always been very …

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Protest organisers rely on social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter to get supporters out onto the streets, but some suspect they are being sabotaged.

Al Jazeera’s Andy Gallacher reports from Salvador.

Click here for the full story. …

Egypt’s army has cautioned that it will intervene next weekend if mass rallies against the president descend into violence, in one of its strongest warnings since it handed over to civilian government a year ago. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the defence minister, said he would not allow “attack on the will of the people” and called for political reconciliation in the week before mass rallies against President Mohamed Morsi next Sunday.

“There is a state of division …

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has sent a Texas case on race-based college admissions back to a lower court for another look.

The court’s 7-1 decision Monday leaves unsettled many of the basic questions about the continued use of race as a factor in college admissions.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the court, said a federal appeals court needs to subject the University of Texas admission plan to the highest level of judicial scrutiny.

The compromise ruling …

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BANGKOK, Thailand — Their condition recalls dark tales from the 18th century: underfed men lorded over by seafaring captains who pay them nothing and maim the disobedient.

Yet these forced labor abuses play out on Thai-owned fishing trawlers each day. And the victims — typically destitute men from Myanmar or Cambodia lured by coyotes full of false promises — continue to wash ashore with accounts of torture and casual homicide.

For years, US officials have urged Thailand, …

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GMOs are kind of a sticky wicket. In a super-oversimplified nutshell, some people say they’re bad (unless you’re a huge corporation getting rich off them). Others are quick to counter, “OMG how else are we going to feed the world?! Shut the eff up already and grow the robot-food!” I’ll make no pretense of neutrality. Robot food for everyone! (KIDDING. Shudder.)

So those of us in the skeptical-of-GMOs camp may be happy to hear Chipotle is …

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Calls for the doctors who force-feed hunger-striking prisoners at Guantánamo Bay to refuse to perform the practice on ethical grounds have got nowhere, a spokesman for the prison said on Thursday.

No doctors, nurses or corpsman had balked at feeding the prisoners or even voiced a concern about the military’s policy of using what’s known as enteral feeding to prevent any of the hunger strikers starving to death, said Navy Captain Robert Durand.

“They signed up to …

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Goodwill is paying some of its disabled workers just 22 cents an hour, while the charity’s executives make six figure salaries. A labor law loophole enables the practice.

Some Pennsylvania Goodwill workers who are disabled made as little as 22, 38 and 41 cents per hour in 2011, according to Labor Department documents reviewed by NBC News. That’s because a 1938 law, called the Special Wage Certificate Program, aimed at encouraging employers to hire disabled workers, …

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TAUNGGYI, Myanmar — After a ritual prayer atoning for past sins, Ashin Wirathu, a Buddhist monk with a rock-star following in Myanmar, sat before an overflowing crowd of thousands of devotees and launched into a rant against what he called “the enemy” — the country’s Muslim minority.

“You can be full of kindness and love, but you cannot sleep next to a mad dog,” Ashin Wirathu said, referring to Muslims.

“I call them troublemakers, because they …

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An underground tank holding some of the worst radioactive waste at the nation’s most contaminated nuclear site might be leaking into the soil.

The U.S. Energy Department said workers at Washington state’s Hanford Nuclear Reservation detected higher radioactivity levels under tank AY-102 during a routine inspection Thursday.

Spokeswoman Lori Gamache said the department has notified Washington officials and is investigating the leak further. An engineering analysis team will conduct additional sampling and video inspection to determine the …

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