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“I was telling myself: ‘Viana should not grow up in the same conditions in this country that you grew up in’,” Azam Jangravi’s recalled this week in an interview in an apartment in an undisclosed location outside Iran, where she now awaits news on an application for asylum. Since Iran’s Islamic Revolution 40 years ago this week, women have been ordered to cover their hair for the sake of modesty. Violators are publicly admonished, fined or arrested. Jangravi was one of at least 39 women arrested last year in connection with hijab protests, according to Amnesty International, which says another 55 people were detained for their work on women’s rights.

Loved by passengers, feared by accountants, the world’s largest airliner has run out of runway after Airbus decided to close A380 production after 12 years in service due to weak sales. It is the final act in one of Europe’s greatest industrial adventures and reflects a dearth of orders by airline bosses unwilling to back Airbus’s vision of huge jets to combat airport congestion.

Here’s what has happened in Leflore County, Mississippi, since the end of the U.S. recession in 2009. The number of jobs fell 4 percent and nearly 8 percent of the businesses disappeared. Average annual pay at private firms stalled. The United States’ record-setting and near-decade-long recovery from the 2007 to 2009 recession has restored many measures of the national economy back to or better than what they were. But it has done little for Leflore County, or for many rural places like it whose continued slip from the economic mainstream worries Federal Reserve and other policymakers who fear it could feed broader problems .

Politics

Democrats swear off big money, but will it hurt their 2020 White House chances? “I’m not taking a single check from a federal lobbyist. I’m not taking applications from billionaires who want to run a Super PAC on my behalf. And I challenge every other candidate who asks for your vote in this primary to say exactly the same thing,” Senator Elizabeth Warren said during her rally last Saturday in Massachusetts. Warren issued a pointed campaign finance challenge to fellow Democratic U.S. presidential contenders at her official 2020 White House election launch.

Congress aimed to end a dispute over border security with legislation that would ignore President Donald Trump’s border wall. Racing against a Friday midnight deadline, when operating funds expire for the agencies that employ about 800,000 workers at the DHS, the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Justice and others, the Senate and House of Representatives aimed to pass the legislation later on Thursday.

The U.S. Senate was set to approve President Donald Trump’s attorney general nominee William Barr, putting the veteran Republican lawyer in charge of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of any ties between Trump’s campaign and Russia.

World

The European Commission added Saudi Arabia, Panama and four U.S. territories to a blacklist of nations it considers a threat because of lax controls on terrorism financing and money laundering, the EU executive said. The move is part of a crackdown on money laundering after several scandals at EU banks.

British Prime Minister Theresa May could face a defeat in parliament on Thursday over her plan to renegotiate the Brexit deal, undermining her pledge to the European Union that, with changes, she can get the agreement approved.

Norway’s government approved the building of a copper mine near Europe’s northernmost point despite years of opposition from indigenous Sami herders and fishermen. Norway’s decision on the copper mine has been viewed as a litmus test for the Arctic, where climate change and technology are enabling mineral and energy extraction, shipping and tourism, but threatening traditional ways of life.

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Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo have been imprisoned in Myanmar for 430 days. Follow updates on the case: https://reut.rs/2DCibFO

6:40 AM - 14 Feb 2019