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lashing out against dissent that has undermined the reputation of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan as a democratic reformer. The United States and European powers see Erdogan as a vital strategic partner, especially in dealing with the Syria conflict, but have become alarmed by what looks like a deepening disregard for human rights.
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Forced late-term abortion highlights abuses in enforcement of China's one-child policy
• BEIJING (AP) -- When her mind is clear, Gong Qifeng can recall how she begged for mercy. Several people pinned her head, arms, knees and ankles to a hospital bed before driving a syringe of labor-inducing drugs into her stomach.
• She was seven months pregnant with what would have been her second boy. The drugs caused her to have a stillborn baby after 35 hours of excruciating pain. She was forced to have the abortion by officials in China's southern province of Hunan in the name of complying with national limits on family size.
• "It was the pain of my lifetime, worse than the pain of delivering a child. You cannot describe it," Gong, 25, said in a recent interview in Beijing. "And it has become a mental pain. I feel like a walking corpse."
• Since the abortion more than two years ago, Gong has been diagnosed with schizophrenia. She traveled with her husband to the capital to demand help paying for her treatment, but she ended up being hauled away in her pajamas by police, a detention recorded on video by The Associated Press.
• Forced abortions are considered an acceptable way of enforcing China's population limits, but they are banned when the woman is more than five months pregnant. Yet no one has been held accountable for Gong's late-term abortion, and other women in similar cases also struggle to get justice and compensation.
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Airlines go on buying spree for 8,200 new jets; old planes get sent to desert chop shop
• ROSWELL, N.M. (AP) -- Capt. Paul Wannberg glides an old Boeing 757 over the New Mexico desert, lining up with the runway. A computerized voice squawks elevation warnings. Forty feet. Thirty. Twenty. Ten. Touchdown.
• Outside the cockpit window sit nearly a hundred airplane carcasses, perfectly lined up. They are jets that nobody wants anymore. And -- after 26,057 takeoffs (Continued on page 24)
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