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  June 19, 2013, 5:00 am

Anti-war Democrats’ lack of unity gives Obama cover on Syria policy

By Julian Pecquet and Mike Lillis

Liberal Democrats are all over the map when it comes to Syria.

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  June 18, 2013, 6:23 pm

Cornyn demands Pentagon cancel contract with Russian arms dealer

By Ramsey Cox and Carlo Munoz

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) demanded Tuesday that the Pentagon end its contract with Rosoboronexport, a Russian arms dealer, because it is inadvertently harming Syrians.

“American taxpayers should not be indirectly subsidizing the murder of Syrians,” Cornyn said on the Senate floor. “If the Pentagon keeps this contract it will undermine U.S. support to the Syrian people.”

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  June 18, 2013, 5:46 pm

Senators pledge 'full support' for 'decisive' military action in Syria

By Julian Pecquet

Sens. Bob Menendez, Carl Levin and John McCain are urging President Obama to take out Syria's air defenses.

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  June 18, 2013, 2:31 pm

GOP skeptical of Taliban talks

By Jeremy Herb

Republican senators on Tuesday said they were skeptical that anything would come from of the Taliban’s agreement to start peace talks with the United States and the Afghan government.

Several Republicans said the Obama administration had spoken with them about the agreement on Monday, before it was announced publicly, and they didn’t oppose the notion of talking.

But there was deep pessimism that the Taliban would be willing lay down arms until it’s defeated on the battlefield, and until the U.S. states what size force it will leave behind in Afghanistan after it fully transfers security control to the Afghans in 2014.

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  June 18, 2013, 2:10 pm

Royce, Engel partner up on food aid reform amendment to farm bill

By Julian Pecquet

The chairman and ranking member on the House Foreign Affairs panel announced Tuesday that they will propose reforming the nation's food aid program as a bipartisan amendment to the pending farm bill. 

Reps. Ed Royce (R-Calif.) and Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) said their amendment would save the federal government $215 million a year by allowing the U.S. Agency for International Development to spend up to 45 percent of food aid funds of local food instead of shipping it from the United States. The House is expected to vote on a five-year farm bill this week.

“By enacting these bipartisan, commonsense food aid reforms, we can do more with less – we can feed more starving people, more quickly, at a lower cost,” Royce said in announcing the amendment.

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  June 18, 2013, 1:44 pm

Business groups press for action on India's trade practices

By Vicki Needham

More than a dozen U.S. business groups are banding together to resolve what they argue is a sharp rise in discriminatory trade practices by India.

The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) and the Chamber of Commerce’s Global Intellectual Property Center (GIPC) on Tuesday helped launch a new alliance that is urging the Obama administration to work toward solutions to widespread problems they say are benefiting India's businesses at the expense of U.S. jobs.

"India’s unfair trade practices against U.S. manufactured exports is putting jobs at risk and harming American manufacturing workers,” said Linda Dempsey, NAM's vice president for international economic affairs.

The group is specifically asking Secretary of State John Kerry, who is heading to India this month, to immediately engage at the highest levels of the Indian government to stop practices that they say are undermining the long-standing trade relationship. 

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  June 18, 2013, 1:03 pm

Durbin resolution expresses concern over Ukraine prime minister's imprisonment

By Ramsey Cox

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) announced Tuesday that he would introduce a resolution expressing concern over the imprisonment of a former Ukraine prime minister.

Durbin said it was wrong for the Ukrainian government to hold its former prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko, in prison for political reasons, adding that’s not how a real political Democracy behaves.

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  June 18, 2013, 11:47 am

Army Corps deals blow to green groups on coal exports

By Zack Colman

Opponents of proposed coal export terminals in the Pacific Northwest were dealt a blow Tuesday when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said it wouldn’t conduct a broad environmental evaluation for the projects.

Jennifer Moyer, the Corps’s acting regulatory chief, said during a House hearing that there is “no compelling justification” to conduct an area-wide environmental impact statement for each of the three outstanding applications to build coal export terminals in Washington and Oregon.

“They are independent projects in different locations, whose impacts are not related,” she told the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on Energy and Power.

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  June 18, 2013, 11:44 am

Report: Kerry picks Feingold for Africa envoy post

By Daniel Strauss

Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday selected former Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) to serve as special envoy for the Africa Great Lakes region, according to The Associated Press.

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  June 18, 2013, 11:43 am

Sen. Mark Kirk breaks with Obama over outreach to Iran's new president

By Julian Pecquet

Obama welcomed Hassan Rouhani's election as a sign that voters in Iran have “rebuffed the hardliners and the clerics."

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