World

The world's wealthiest nations are promising to fight what they call the scourge of tax evasion. This week's meeting of the Group of Eight industrialized countries concluded with a pledge to end the use of tax shelters by multinational corporations.

But there are still big questions about how they will make a dent in the problem.

In the aftermath of the global recession, countries all over the world have struggled with budget shortfalls. More and more of them have come to blame part of their revenue problems on one culprit — tax avoidance.

Against a backdrop that evoked the Cold War, President Obama renewed his push to reduce the world's nuclear stockpiles on Wednesday. Obama delivered an address outside the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. He also meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Tourism workers in Luxor, Egypt, are threatening protest over the appointment of the region's new governor. Over the weekend Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi appointed Adel el-Khayat to lead Luxor. El-Khayat is a member of a political party strongly associated with the Islamist group Gamaa Islamiya, a group connected to attacks in Luxor in 1997 that killed 58 tourists. Parliament member Abdul Mawgoud Rageh Dardery represents Luxor. He speaks with Robert Siegel about the appointment and the reaction to it.

Marsa Alam is a region of more than 100 miles of beautiful coastlines, coral reefs and diving spots. But the city itself is a microcosm of neglect in Egypt since the revolution. It is a ghost town of unfinished construction and promised infrastructure that still doesn't exist. There is no power grid, no water so local hotels and resorts must provide their own generators and water source. And a diesel crisis has hit business hard. When there is no fuel, tour operators can't power their boats or generators and can't take advantage of the few tourists who visit the area.

The State Department issued its annual report on Human Trafficking on Wednesday and some key countries, including Russia and China, are getting downgraded. The report says that more countries were downgraded than upgraded this year and that's because of corruption and the lack of political will to confront entrenched forced labor interests, including shrimping in Thailand, palm oil in Malaysia and construction in Russia, which will be hosting the Olympics in 2014.

The U.S. State Department releases its report on human trafficking every year, naming the countries it believes aren't doing enough to combat modern-day slavery.

The National Hurricane Center has issued coastal warnings in the Gulf of Mexico regarding Tropical Storm Barry. The second named storm of the 2013 hurricane season, Barry is currently in the southwest corner of the gulf; it is expected to make landfall in Mexico Thursday morning.

The center says an Air Force reconnaissance aircraft determined Wednesday that the storm, formerly called Tropical Depression Two, had strengthened. Barry is currently about 75 miles east-northeast of Veracruz, Mexico.

The White House says the United States will arm Syrian rebels, but a new poll shows most Americans don't like the idea. Guest host Celeste Headlee speaks with Shadi Hamid of The Brookings Institution, about America's current and future involvement in Syria.

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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep. A Canadian man was a bit wilder than his country's reputation. Police say he was driving 112 miles per hour on a highway south of Black Diamond, Alberta. When they got a look at the man, they found he was 67 - possibly old enough to know better. But by the time the suspect got to court, he had his story straight.

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When Barack Obama became president and offered his hand to Iran, that country's elites reacted skeptically. Many said he was a new face, but still represented Iran's great enemy. Now, Iran will have a new face, winner of last week's presidential election, Hassan Rohani. He says he wants better relations with the outside world, so it's America's turn to wonder just how much Rohani could really change in Iran's confrontation with the U.S. NPR's Michele Kelemen reports on the evidence so far.

President Obama met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel Wednesday before giving a speech at Berlin's historic Brandenburg Gate. Fifty years ago next week, President Kennedy declared his support for the citizens of West Germany in his "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech.

Faced with the threat of mutiny for what seems like the umpteenth time during his speakership, John Boehner moved to mollify fellow Republicans on Tuesday, saying immigration legislation would need the support of a majority of the House GOP before it could be brought to a floor vote.

After emerging from a meeting with House Republicans, following days of warnings by conservatives that the Ohio Republican had better not try to pass an immigration bill with mostly Democratic votes, Boehner sought to calm the roiling Republican waters.

As protests against the Turkish government enter their third week, activists are taking increasingly creative measures to maintain their momentum.

You have to wonder if President Obama ever thought, when he first ran for the White House, that he would need to defend himself from accusations his presidency would be a mere extension of his Republican predecessor.

But there he was with journalist Charlie Rose having to explain why his approach to national security wasn't really like that of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

In the past decade, Mexico's tech industry has flourished, growing three times faster than the global average. Most of that growth has been fueled by demand from the United States. But as Mexico's startups strive to make it in foreign markets, they say they need more engineers and ways to finance their growth.

The United States and Europe stepped up cooperation on security issues after Sept. 11, 2001. But that doesn't mean they agree on everything. The latest point of friction: What are the rules when it comes to privacy rights?

The revelations about the National Security Agency's surveillance programs not only touched off a ferocious debate in the U.S. but also struck a nerve in Europe.

Twelve years after the war began, Afghanistan's president announced Tuesday that Afghan forces officially assumed control of security for the country. U.S. and NATO troops will remain until the 2014 deadline, but the Afghan military is now expected to fight without NATO support.

Nearly half of the 7,000 languages spoken in the world are expected to vanish in the next 100 years. One of them is Athabaskan, a language of the Siletz tribe in the Pacific Northwest. Bud Lane, vice chairman of Siletz tribal council, explains the importance of language diversity.

They are young, they are angry and they have drawn inspiration from protest movements a world away in places like Turkey and the Middle East.

Tens of thousands of Brazilians took to the streets across the country Monday night, and more demonstrations are slated for the coming week. Brazil doesn't have a history of this kind of mass dissent, but it seems to be catching on very quickly.

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MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

This is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. I'm Michel Martin. Coming up, data mining and privacy issues are in the news. But we want to talk about some data that could affect your life in ways you might not have considered. We're talking about your credit reports and we'll talk about how errors can appear and cost you plenty, and what to do about that. That's coming up later in the program.

At a ceremony in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Tuesday, NATO officially handed over security of Afghanistan to the country's forces. It marked the first time the whole nation has been under Afghan control since the coalition invaded to oust the Taliban in 2001.

From Brussels, Teri Schultz filed this report for our Newscast unit:

"Afghan forces are now leading security operations all over the country, as NATO-led forces gradually drop back into a supporting role in the remaining, most difficult, districts.

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Just because a government is democratically elected does not mean it is immune to protest. We've been watching demonstrations and the government response in Turkey. And now the demonstrations we're about to hear about took place in Brazil.

(SOUNDBITE OF CHANTING PROTESTERS)

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This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. Good morning. I'm David Greene.

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And I'm Steve Inskeep. It's easy for us to overlook, given the violence elsewhere in the Middle East, but violence in Iraq has risen sharply. Since the start of April, more than 2,000 people have been killed in car bombings and other attacks. Iraq has not seen that level of killing since the worst of the sectarian war back in 2006 and 2007. NPR's Kelly McEvers reports.

Earlier this year, the U.S. government accused China's military of running a massive cyberspying campaign to steal business secrets from American companies.

"We've made it very clear to China and some other state actors that, you know, we expect them to follow international norms and abide by international rules," President Obama told ABC News in March.

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The Paris Air Show is celebrating its golden anniversary this year. Even after 50 years, it remains the leading showcase for the global aerospace industry.

But as NPR's Eleanor Beardsley reports, with U.S. Defense cuts, this year it's the Europeans who are taking the spotlight.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: Welcome to the Paris Air Show...