President Barack Obama on Friday signed into law legislation – previously passed unanimously by both the House and the Senate – that would among other things prohibit Iran’s pick for its next U.N. ambassador from entering the United States. Hamid Aboutalebi was a member of the Muslim Student Followers of the Imam’s...

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English-language Palestinian media reported on Thursday that the Executive Board of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) had voted to dispatch an expert mission to Jerusalem: Palestine and Jordan, thanks to support from Arab and Islamic groups, successfully passed Thursday a UNESCO Executive Board resolution to send an expert...

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The United Nation’s news service on Thursday conveyed a call by what the wire described as “a group of independent [U.N.] human rights experts” demanding that the Iranian government provide medical treatment – or, more precisely, that it cease denying such treatment – to blogger Mohammad Reza Pourshajari and religious cleric Sayed...

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The status of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks remained unclear through much of Thursday, amid the publication of conflicting reports describing not just ongoing meetings but also regarding proposals to extend negotiations beyond the original April 29 deadline of a U.S.-backed peace push. Substantive final status negotiations have been offline since last...

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Speaking Tuesday, the United Nation’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, flatly declared that war crimes and atrocities committed by the regime of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad far outweigh” what have been sometimes been treated as parallel actions by opposition elements: High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said both sides’...

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The Senate Monday night voted by unanimous consent to deny entry to the United States to persons who had engaged in espionage or terrorism against the U.S., a move aimed at barring Hamid Aboutalebi – Iran’s pick for United Nations ambassador – from acquiring a visa to take up his post. Aboutalebi...

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday revealed that extensive efforts to extend Israeli-Palestinian peace talks were in progress when Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas announced – in what the Associated Press described as a “hastily convened” press conference – that he would be turning to the United Nations and seeking to ascend...

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This week the European Parliament passed a resolution condemning the human rights situation in Iran for “continued, systemic violation of fundamental rights” and called on its member states to prioritize human rights in their dealings with Iran. Despite the continuing nuclear talks between Iran and the P5+1 countries, the Islamic...

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Reuters on Thursday published details from a Wednesday press conference held by Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Malki, in which Malki declared that he didn’t “expect any consequences coming from the U.S. Congress” after Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas signed papers requesting membership for the “State of Palestine” in 15 international treaties....

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The United Nations on Thursday announced that more than one million refugees have flooded into Lebanon from Syria, creating what The New York Times described as “the highest concentration of refugees as a percentage of population in the world, with about one Syrian for every three Lebanese.” “The influx of a million...

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