The prison, the pub and other landmarks that influenced author

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VIDEO: Dickens’s London: Prison to the pub

The United States Constitution was once a model for charters around the world, but its influence is waning, according to a new study.

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Sidebar: ‘We the People’ Loses Appeal With People Around the World

We have seen the world created by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, and it doesn’t work. Oh, yes, it works nicely for the wealthiest and most powerful people in the country, especially if they want to shroud their efforts to influence politics behind shell corporations. It just doesn’t happen to work if you think we are a democracy and not a plutocracy. Read full article > >

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The Citizens United catastrophe

The U.S. military launched an airstrike against Yemen’s al-Qaeda affiliate on Tuesday, targeting an area of the country where the group is increasingly asserting its influence. At least a dozen people were killed in the strike, including insurgents from al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and local militants, according to some reports. Other accounts put the death toll at about half that number. Read full article > >

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U.S. launches airstrike against al-Qaeda affiliate in Yemen

Romney says he was “influence peddling.”

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Gingrich Pounded on Freddie Mac

The growing literary influence of WG Sebald

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Film remembers ‘exceptional’ Sebald

First, the title. “America’s Most Hated Family” is a bit of a misnomer, since it gives too much credit to Fred Phelps’s nuclear family of wingdings, whose numbers are minimal but whose influence is magnified by the fact that we — the media, the counterprotesters, the sane people — keep upturning the rock they live under to examine them, again, and again, and again. Read full article > >

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‘America’s Most Hated Family’ doesn’t delve deep enough into Phelps clan

Influenced by cable and the Internet, the network news divisions of ABC, CBS and NBC have shifted the focus to differentiating their nightly shows.

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At ABC, CBS and NBC News, Accentuating the Differences

The discussion everywhere these days is about Iran’s strength. Mitt Romney, the Republican front-runner, describes Iran as “ the greatest threat that the world faces over the next decade .” He and others are impressed by Iran’s recent declarations about its nuclear capacities and its missile tests. Newt Gingrich has compared the Iranian challenge to the rise of Hitler’s Germany. More measured commentators also see Iran’s rising influence and power across the Middle East. Read full article > >

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Iran’s growing state of desperation

Philip Larkin’s bitter poem about the influence of our parents — “They [mess] you up, your mum and dad” — could be the epigraph of Joe Dunthorne’s second novel, “ Wild Abandon .” But Dunthorne marinates dysfunction in sweet absurdity to produce a wry comedy, the latest addition to that black-sheep genre known as Quirky Families. You’ve seen these people: They’re staples of indie films such as “ Little Miss Sunshine ” or novels such as Kevin Wilson’s recent “ The Family Fang .” In such stories, psychological abuse or parental neglect that should poison precocious children is somehow ameliorated by affection and irony. On good days, that strikes me as a perfectly realistic view, and Dunthorne is one of its wittiest proponents. His first novel, “ Submarine ” (2008), was enthusiastically compared to “ The Catcher in the Rye ” and attracted even more attention when Richard Ayoade’s movie adaptation was released last year. Read full article > >

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Joe Dunthorne’s ‘Wild Abandon’: Mixing sweet absurdity with dysfunction

This article, written by Muhammad Sahimi,appeared in Pbs.org on December 31,2011 A long history of quiet influence and power.

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The Canny General: Quds Force Commander Ghasem Soleimani

Vigorous efforts to get farmers to grow something else had results, but the crop is returning, and with it, the influence of the Taliban.

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In Afghanistan, a Troubling Resurgence of the Poppy Crop

An advertising deluge against Newt Gingrich by a group supporting Mitt Romney shows how a court ruling has created powerful ways for outside money to influence elections.

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Restore Our Future Attack Ads Harm Gingrich in Iowa

Even before the first Republican presidential candidates declared they were running, pundits and political operatives alike were debating the Fox News Channel’s potential influence on the GOP race. As the cable news network with the strongest appeal among conservatives, Fox News seemed poised to play a kingmaking role in the 2012 primaries. Read full article > >

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Despite kingmaking expectations, Fox News seems neutral among GOP field

Naama Margolese has become the face of a conflict over the influence of extremists in Israel after her story of being accosted by ultra-Orthodox men was reported in the media.

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Israeli Girl at Center of Tension Over Religious Extremism