United Nations News Blog @newzblogz.com

VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- Former President Kurt Waldheim was buried Saturday in the presence of Austrian dignitaries who declared he was unjustly smeared by allegations linking him to the Nazis. Waldheim, who also served as U.N. chief from 1972-81, died June 14 at his home in Vienna, with his name still on a watch list barring him from entering the United States. He was 88 years old. Speaking at the ceremony at St. Stephen's Cathedral, President Heinz Fischer said Waldheim's life had to be jud...

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One year later the United Nations' new, improved Human Rights Council has delivered on just about everything envisioned by its worst critics. With abuses raging around the world, the council is as bad as, or worse than, the discredited commission it replaced.

More's the pity that the preservation of human rights was -- past tense intended -- one of the U.N.'s founding objectives: "... to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights in the dignity and worth of the human person ... ."

What exists today doesn't begin to address that objective. The panel follows the example of its predecessor, the U.N. Human Rights Commission, which became a self-serving vehicle for the world's worst abusers.

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Sridhar Ramachandran, chief technology officer at NexTone Communications in Gaithersburg, said a science-based education "was kind of a given" in India, where relatives were engineers.

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Kara Rowland/The Washington Times

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Ships from France, Russia and the United Kingdom will take part in a five-day exercise at Naval Station Norfolk and off the Virginia/North Carolina coast.

HMS Portland (F79), FS La Fayette (F710), USS Laboon (DDG 58) and RFS Admiral Chabanenko (650) will undergo training scenarios at sea and ashore.

The U.S. Navy says previous exercises, which started in 1988, centered on week-long programs of talks and training focused on Peace Support Operations within a United Nations context.

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During the Cold War, Moscow had two major newspapers. Propaganda-wary Russians joked bitterly that “There is no Pravda in Izvestia, and no Izvestia in Pravda” (”There is no truth in News, and no news in Truth.”) People didn't so much read the press as attempt to decode it. Who wants me to believe what, and why?We're not there yet, but we're definitely headed that way. When The New York Times and Washington Post feature same-day, front...

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