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pensation for illness and injury caused by military service.
•  The number of claims waiting to be processed ballooned under Obama, largely because the administration made it easier for Vietnam veterans who were exposed to the Agent Orange defoliant to get benefits.
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•  MEXICO CITY (AP) -- U.S. law enforcement officials expressed outrage over the release from prison of Mexican drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero and vowed to continue efforts to bring to justice the man who ordered the killing of a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent.
•  Caro Quintero was sentenced to 40 years in prison for the 1985 kidnapping and killing of DEA agent Enrique Camarena but a Mexican federal court ordered his release this week saying he had been improperly tried in a federal court for state crimes.
•  The 60-year-old walked out of a prison in the western state of Jalisco early Friday after serving 28 years of his sentence.
•  The U.S. Department of Justice said it found the court's decision "deeply troubling."
•  "The Department of Justice, and especially the Drug Enforcement Administration, is extremely disappointed with this result," it said in a statement.
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•  BAMAKO, Mali (AP) -- Longtime politician Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, who many hope will hold strife-torn Mali together, heads into the presidential runoff election on Sunday as the clear favorite with endorsements from nearly all of the 28 candidates from the first round.
•  Whether Keita -- known by his initials IBK -- will win such a strong mandate across Mali, though, remains unclear in a country where northern rebels pelted his plane with rocks on a campaign stop there.
•  This West African country's pivotal election is aimed at unlocking some $4 billion in aid promised by international donors after more than a year of turmoil including a coup, followed by an Islamic insurgency that seized a region the size of Afghanistan and a subsequent French-led military intervention that brought thousands of foreign

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