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said. "This war is a Syrian problem."
• Now safe in Lebanon, Umm Sami and her family have joined thousands of other Palestinian refugees who have found shelter in the country since the uprising against Syrian President Bashar Assad erupted nearly two years ago. The conflict has left more than 2 million people internally displaced, and pushed 650,000 more to seek refuge abroad.
• Umm Sami's resolve to keep her sons out of the fight in Syria ties into a deep-rooted sentiment among a generation of Palestinian refugees who say they are fed up with being dragged into the region's conflicts on a promise of getting their own state.
• ___

• CAIRO (AP) -- Police are firing tear gas at rock-throwing protesters in Cairo a day after Egypt's president declared a state of emergency in three provinces hit hardest by political violence.
• The clashes Monday near Tahrir Square mark the fifth consecutive day of street violence in Egypt.
• Late Sunday, thousands of protesters demonstrated in Port Said, Ismailiya and Suez to reject President Mohammed Morsi's declaration of a 30-day state of emergency in the three Suez Canal cities and their surrounding provinces.
• Those provinces have been the hardest hit by a weekend wave of unrest that has left more than 50 dead.
• Morsi declared the state of emergency in a televised address late Sunday and warned that he would not hesitate to take more action to stem Egypt's latest eruption of violence.
• ___

• SEVARE, Mali (AP) -- Ground forces backed by French paratroopers and helicopters took control of the airport and roads leading to the fabled desert town of Timbuktu in an overnight operation, a French military official said Monday.
• The move marked the latest inroad by the two-week-old French mission to oust radical Islamists from the northern half of Mali, which they seized more than nine

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