Venezuela postpones inauguration for cancer-stricken Chavez

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela will postpone the inauguration of President Hugo Chavez for a new term due to health problems, the government said on Tuesday, another sign the socialist leader's cancer may be bringing an end to his 14 years in power.The 58-year-old former soldier who has dominated the South American OPEC nation since 1999 has not been heard from since surgery on December 11 in Cuba...

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Officials: US may leave no troops in Afghanistan

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration gave the first explicit signal Tuesday that it might leave no troops in Afghanistan after December 2014, an option that defies the Pentagon's view that thousands of troops may be needed to keep a lid on al-Qaida and to strengthen Afghan forces."The U.S. does not have an inherent objective of 'X' number of troops in Afghanistan," said Ben Rhodes, a White...

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Rwanda opposes use of drones by the U.N. in eastern Congo

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Rwanda on Tuesday opposed the use of surveillance drones in eastern Congo as proposed by the United Nations until there is a full assessment of their use, saying it did not want Africa to become a laboratory for foreign intelligence devices.Envoys said U.N. peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous told the Security Council during a closed-door session that the U.N mission in the...

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Son says Romney was reluctant to run for president again: report

 Republican Mitt Romney's family had to convince him to make a second bid for the presidency because he was reluctant to run again after failing to secure his party's nomination in 2008, Romney's son told the Boston Globe on Sunday.In an article that examined what went wrong with Romney's losing 2012 presidential campaign, Tagg Romney said his father Mitt said he had no intention of running again...

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Deportations of illegal immigrants in 2012 reach new US record

The United States deported more than 400,000 illegal immigrants in 2012, the most of any year in the nation’s history, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) reports.The record number, released Friday, is also important for another reason: It is a stinging reminder to Latinos that President Obama failed during his first term to pursue the comprehensive immigration reform that they seek.The Obama...

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Republicans Turn to An Unlikely Name for Inspiration: George W. Bush

As Republicans reassess their future in the presidential wilderness, seeking a message and messenger to resonate with a new generation of voters, one unlikely name has popped up as a role model: former President George W. Bush.Prominent Republicans eager to rebuild the party in the wake of the 2012 election are pointing to Bush’s successful campaigns for Hispanic votes, his efforts to pass immigration...

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Why the Election Polls Missed the Mark

In the days following an election in which his organization's polls proved to be inaccurate, Gallup Editor in Chief Frank Newport published a blog post warning of "a collective mess."The results of the election--President Obama's 4-point victory--was not the only indication that Gallup's polls were biased in favor of Republican Mitt Romney. Websites that average and aggregate polls showed, on balance,...

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The Tea Party's War on Itself Now Includes a Literal Armed Rebellion

It's been more than a month since the 2012 election was decided, but the postmortems continue, particularly for the Tea Party, which continues to have its relevance questioned after a tumultuous year. Both The Washington Post and The New York Times published Christmas Day stories about competing factions within the movement — gun-toting infights and all — and how they will fight to control its mission...

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NRA returns to public debate, to meet with media

One week after the mass shootings that killed 26 people at a Connecticut elementary school — 20 of them children — the nation's largest gun-rights lobby is returning to the spotlight as Congress prepares to consider tighter restrictions on firearms in the new year.The 4.3 million-member National Rifle Association largely disappeared from public debate after the shootings in Newtown, Conn., choosing...

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NRA calls for armed police officer in every school

Guns and police officers in all American schools are what's needed to stop the next killer "waiting in the wings," the National Rifle Association declared Friday, taking a no-retreat stance in the face of growing calls for gun control after the Connecticut shootings that claimed the lives of 26 children and school staff."The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun," said...

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Few report sex assaults at military academies

New details in a Pentagon report show that military academy students report just a fraction of the sexual assaults they say occurred in the past school year, signaling a continued reluctance by victims to seek criminal investigations.As reported earlier this week, the report shows that reported sexual assaults at the nation's three military academies jumped by 23 percent overall this year. But officials...

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Iran claims it has circumvented sanctions

Iran's oil minister claims his country has successfully circumvented sanctions on the sale of its oil. State TV on Sunday broadcast comments by Rostam Ghasemi that the industry was in "bad shape" about two months ago due to the oil embargo by the West, "but we left the bottleneck behind, almost." Ghasemi also said that Iran has set up its own insurance for ships that carry its oil after Western companies...

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Linguist charged under Espionage Act is released

A federal judge has released a linguist for the Navy in Bahrain who is facing charges, under the Espionage Act, of possessing classified documents without authorization. But the judge ordered him to be kept under surveillance by an electronic monitoring device.James Hitselberger, who is fluent in Arabic, has pleaded not guilty to the charges. His job as a federal contractor was to translate documents...

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