There are a few dictums that have enjoyed pride of place in black American families alongside “Honor your parents” and “Do unto others” since at least Emancipation. One of them is this: The road to freedom passes through the schoolhouse doors.

After all, it was illegal even to teach an enslaved person to read in many states; under Jim Crow, literacy tests were used for decades to deny black voters their rights. So no surprise that …

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LONDON – Just as rich nations have passed the responsibility for carbon dioxide emissions to the developing nations, so the rich provinces of China have exported the problem to the poorest regions, according to new research.

The world’s biggest single emitter of the greenhouse gas – 10 billion tons in 2011 – has undertaken to reduce the “carbon intensity” of its economy. But, according to Klaus Hubacek of the University of Maryland and colleagues, the …

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A cutting-edge biological terror alert system detected a potential threat in the air one morning back in 2008, threatening to derail then-Senator Barack Obama’s acceptance speech in Denver for his party’s presidential nomination at the Democratic National Convention. Initial results from a pricey national air sampling system suggested that bacteria that could cause tularemia had been detected. The microbe, Francisella tularensis, might have been weaponized to cause the infectious disease.

Public health officials sprang into …

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Hundreds of garment workers fell ill on Sunday after drinking water of questionable quality at their workplace in Gazipur at the outskirts of Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka.

The incident occurred less than two weeks after about 800 workers fell ill and were hospitalized after drinking water at Starlight Sweaters Ltd., which produced clothes for European buyers Carrefour and Otto.

The Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research in Bangladesh, which tested samples of the water after the incident …

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WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama has chosen a high-powered Washington lawyer with extensive experience in all three branches of the government to be the State Department’s special envoy for closing down the military-run prison at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba.

Clifford Sloan is the pick to reopen the State Department’s Office of Guantanamo Closure, shuttered since January and folded into the department’s legal adviser’s office when the administration, in the face of congressional obstacles, …

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Amnesty International has called for several African nations to arrest and detain former President George W. Bush for authorizing the use of waterboarding and other forms of torture.

Mr. Bush is visiting Ethiopia, Tanzania and Zambia this week to raise awareness about cervical and breast cancer and HIV/AIDS.

The international human rights group’s written statement recognizes the value those goals, but says it “cannot lessen the damage to the fight against torture caused by allowing someone who …

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Although big Supreme Court cases involving gay marriage, corporate free speech and affirmative action gain more media and public attention, a proliferation of less noticed court decisions on seemingly arcane legal procedural rules are raising barriers to all American citizens seeking their day in court.

Behind the scenes, the court’s changes to Federal Rules of Procedure lead to dismissal of cases brought by harmed consumers, investors and other citizens before the facts are permitted to be …

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UPDATE—Iran’s interior ministry confirmed on Saturday that Hassan Rouhani, the standard-bearer of the reformist movement and a decided moderate in Iran’s political spectrum, will be the next president, succeeding Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in August. His election means big changes, and a new attitude that will eventually carry over into foreign policy.

Celebrations, including dancing in the street, greeted the announcement that Rouhani had won.

Here’s an account by the Associated Press:

Wild celebrations broke out …

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Canada’s minister of foreign affairs, John Baird, responded to a win by Iranian moderate Hassan Rouhani in the country’s Saturday presidential election with a strongly-worded statement describing the poll as “effectively meaningless.”

Baird accused the regime of silencing “all open, meaningful discussion of key issues that affect ordinary citizens and denied Iranians the right to peaceful assembly and freedom of association” in the lead-up to the vote. The president of Iran has some political power, but …

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We built a shrine for him. A wooden cross, desert stone, rosary, and gallon of water mark where his body was found, thirteen miles north of the Mexican border in Arizona’s Sonoran desert, the deadliest migrant corridor of our southwest border. He may have stopped to rest, weary and sick from the walk north, and never woke up. Because only his bones remained, he is unlikely to be identified and his family will never know …

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