Clinton urges stepped-up fight against Islamic State in Syria

By Luciana Lopez NEW YORK (Reuters) – Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on Thursday urged a tougher approach to fighting Islamic State militants than President Barack Obama has pursued, with an intensified air campaign and more U.S. special forces and trainers. Speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, the former secretary of state offered her most expansive view to date on how to counter a growing militancy that launched attacks in Paris last Friday in which 129 people died

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Iran Quds chief visited Russia despite U.N. travel ban: Iran official

The head of Iran's elite military Quds Force, who is subject to a United Nations travel ban, has met senior Russian officials in Moscow, an Iranian official said on Friday. Qassem Soleimani, chief of the force which is an overseas arm of the Revolutionary Guards, has been subject to an international travel ban and asset freeze by the U.N

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Top choice blocked for U.N. digital privacy investigator post

By Tom Miles GENEVA (Reuters) – The Estonian picked as the U.N.'s first digital privacy investigator was blocked on Friday by the German president of the Human Rights Council after activist groups said she would not be a strong enough critic of U.S. surveillance. Katrin Nyman-Metcalf was the candidate ranked first by a “consultative group” of five ambassadors – from Poland, Chile, Greece, Algeria and chaired by Saudi Arabia

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Russian parliament approves Internet privacy bill

Russia's parliament gave its final approval on Friday to a law that would require Internet search engines to remove users' personal information from their results. The bill, passed by the State Duma lower house in its third reading, seeks to emulate European Union rules on the “right to be forgotten”, under which search engines must take down certain results that appear under a search of a person's name.

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