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• "I came here because I thought I should die while being nursed," said Kang, who had a bitter, lonely childhood here, but came back to find the island had utterly changed.
• Most returnees are cured of the disease and are free to live wherever they choose. But many say life is better here than outside the island, where prejudice against leprosy still runs deep.
• ___

• HARMANLI, Bulgaria (AP) -- Idris Hassan, his wife and their three children fled the carnage of the Syrian war, hoping to find peace and safety in western Europe. Instead, they are stuck in an overcrowded Bulgarian refugee camp -- living in a freezing tent without enough food or running water.
• Thousands of Syrian and other refugees from the Middle East, Asia and Africa, who make a dangerous journey from their war-ravaged countries, often end up in crammed settlements in the Balkans after being blocked at the borders of wealthy Western European nations.
• "We left our country to look for a peaceful, better place to live, where we could give our children proper education," Hassan, 44, said sitting by a fire outside his tent in the Harmanli camp in southern Bulgaria. "But now we see that Bulgaria is a poor country which struggles to provide food for its own people."
• Aid officials say that the humanitarian situation is particularly alarming in Bulgaria, which has faced massive influx of migrants that far outnumbers its capacities. Bulgaria, one of the EU's newest and poorest members, borders Turkey -- a Muslim nation that has become a magnet for Syrians fleeing the war.
• "It is very important that all European countries keep their borders open, accept Syrian refugees and provide them with adequate assistance," said Antonio Guterres, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
• ___

• LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Dennis Rodman is at the top of a list no one wants to be on. He's been named GQ's No. 1 least influential celebrity of 2013.
• The 52-year-old former basketball player who has visited Kim Jong Un in North

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