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Abortion still center stage in Texas as Perry, state GOP try again to impose strict limits
• AUSTIN, Texas (AP) -- Gov. Rick Perry is set to address a national convention of anti-abortion activists -- and now he's made sure he can give them something to cheer about.
• The Republican leader has called a second special legislative session beginning July 1, allowing the GOP-controlled statehouse another crack at passing restrictions that opponents say could shutter nearly all of the abortion clinics across the country's second-largest state.
• Perry's announcement came mere hours after the much-watched proposal failed in the face of a Democratic filibuster in the Senate that turned chaotic when Republicans used parliamentary rules to cut it short. Jeering abortion-rights protesters looking on from the public gallery became so deafening that it halted all action on the floor.
• Perry, who has said he'd like to make abortion at any stage of pregnancy a thing of the past in Texas, called the special session after lawmakers finished the regular session May 27, but didn't add the abortion measure to the issues to be discussed until late in the session.
• The omnibus abortion measure passed the Texas House after nearly an entire night of heated debate Sunday, but the effort to get Senate approval before the session ended at midnight Tuesday failed.
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Obama kicks off visit to re-engage Africa with the hopeful democratic example of Senegal
• DAKAR, Senegal (AP) -- The hopeful story President Barack Obama wants to tell about Africa is represented in the first stop of his weeklong trip to re-engage the continent, in a country where democracy recently overcame an impending electoral crisis.
• During his visit to Senegal on Thursday, Obama also will reflect on the ties many African-Americans share with the continent as he takes a tour of Goree Island, Africa's westernmost point. By some accounts, millions of Africans were shipped off into slavery across the Atlantic Ocean through the island's "Door of No Return."
• It's the first of two island visits Obama planned to highlight racial atrocities of the past. The second was scheduled for Sunday at South Africa's Robben Island, where (Continued on page 29)
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