Special Reports

Insight: Street protests reveal both Bulgaria's failure, success

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SOFIA - Business executive Sasha Bezuhanova feels her life has come full circle.

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Insight: Corporate sleuths on edge after China detains foreign consultants

SHANGHAI - The detention by Chinese authorities of a British corporate investigator and his American wife in the wake of a corruption probe into pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline has had a chilling effect on other risk consultants working in China. | Video

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Insight: For nuns and analysts alike, bank commodity earnings are a mystery

NEW YORK - When the Reverend Seamus Finn got an email from Goldman Sachs last week, the giant Wall Street bank was addressing an issue that was already on his mind.

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Insight: Iraq security forces outmatched as 'open war' returns

BAGHDAD - The prison guards were counting inmates after the evening meal at Abu Ghraib jail when suddenly the lights went out. By the time they realized what was going on, the biggest combat operation by Iraqi insurgents in five years was under way.

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Insight: In the shadow of Mandela, Zimbabwe's Mugabe fights on

JOHANNESBURG - Both are hailed as African liberation heroes and both preached, and were praised for, messages of reconciliation and unity when their countries threw off the shackles of white minority rule.

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Insight: Heavenly iron ore prices bound for purgatory as China reforms

SINGAPORE - From building scores of new towns to constructing state-of-the-art rail networks, China's demand for steel to feed its modern-day industrial revolution has driven a spectacular rally in the price of the raw material iron ore.

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Insight: Bangladesh struggles to check garment factories are safe

DHAKA - In the weeks since the Rana Plaza collapse killed more than 1,100 workers, at least five different Bangladesh agencies have sent teams to begin inspecting the estimated 5,600 factories that make up the nation's $20 billion garment industry. | Video

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Insight: The poison pill in India's search for cheap food

MUMBAI/NEW DELHI - Nearly a decade ago, the Indian government ruled out a ban on the production and use of monocrotophos, the highly toxic pesticide that killed 23 children this month in a village school providing free lunches under a government-sponsored program.

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Insight - Obama and Syria: a trail of half-steps, mixed messages

WASHINGTON - As the Syrian civil war deepened and anti-government rebels struggled to unify their fractious forces, the White House early last year quietly convened an elite group of senior policymakers to advise President Barack Obama.

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Insight: How Samsung is beating Apple in China

GUANGZHOU, China/SEOUL - Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook believes that "over the arc of time" China is a huge opportunity for his pathbreaking company. But time looks to be on the side of rival Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, which has been around far longer and penetrated much deeper into the world's most populous country.

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Russia grants Snowden a year's asylum, summit in doubt

MOSCOW - Russia granted American fugitive Edward Snowden a year's asylum on Thursday, allowing the former U.S. spy agency contractor to slip quietly out of Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport after more than five weeks in limbo but angering the United States. | Video