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A London Summit Tackles A Problem As Old As War Itself

For centuries, governments around the world have often treated sexual violence as an unpreventable fact of war. Books from the Bible to the Iliad talk about rape and pillaging as an inevitable part of conflict. Now that attitude is beginning to change.

As evidence, you can look at the global outrage when hundreds of Nigerian girls were recently kidnapped. Or you can look at a conference that began in London on Tuesday. It's the biggest global meeting ever to address the problem of sexual violence in conflict.

"It is a myth that rape is an inevitable part of conflict," said conference organizer and actress Angelina Jolie. "It is a weapon of war aimed at civilians."

Jolie and British Foreign Secretary William Hague brought together representatives from more than 100 countries for this conference, including U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.

Karen Naimer, who directs the Program on Sexual Violence in Conflict Zones with Physicians for Human Rights, recently saw how the attitudes toward this issue have changed. She was in Congo, at a mobile court that brings justice to remote villages.

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Portions of this interview will air on Morning Edition.

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'Digital Deadly Sins': The Morality Of Our Digital Obsessions

One running thread here at All Tech is smartphone distraction, and whether our increasing dependence on connecting through our devices is bringing us together — or tearing us apart. Whether it's smartphones and social media, or Internet dating, or outsourcing your life with various apps like Uber and Postmates, there's no question we are more digitally dependent than ever, and that means we're confronted with a set of moral questions and dilemmas.

A new interactive from The Guardian and the National Film Board of Canada is taking a closer look at these behaviors by clustering them into "7 Digital Deadly Sins" — sloth, envy, greed and the rest of the gang.

We've embedded the trailer for this project, which features some of its conceits. Questions like: Is it OK to download that movie for free? Are we a little too pleased with ourselves on Facebook? Since when did Twitter become so much more interesting than that flesh-and-blood, right-there-across-the-table-from-you boyfriend?

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FBI Director Comey Looks Ahead To His Next Nine Years

FBI Director Jim Comey brushed back a dark curtain last Thursday morning and emerged to greet his audience, Tonight Show style.

"I feel like a talk show host," Comey told a group of new recruits, the first hired on his watch since he joined the FBI nine months ago.

The FBI director serves for a decade, longer than the president who appointed him, and longer than any other member of the national security establishment. That tenure's designed to insulate the FBI from political influence. But it also gives the bureau's leader the time to put his stamp on an organization that's meant to disrupt terror plots and root out corruption.

That effort is now underway, and it's significant enough to send Comey to the academy in Quantico, Va., where about 50 new agents and another 28 intelligence analysts-in-training fill half the auditorium. He wants to deliver a message about integrity, bravery and judgment.

"You're gonna get to see a lot of bad things in this work, a lot of pain you're gonna absorb," Comey said. "You're gonna help a lot of people and in the course of helping them you're going to be touched by some of the pain and suffering they've endured. I need you to look after yourselves."

FBI Director As Emergency Foster Parent

After his chat with trainees, a reporter asked the FBI director what he does off the clock to stay centered. One answer: he and his wife have been helping as emergency foster parents.

"Little boy who came to us born a month premature in a homeless shelter to a drug-addicted mother and born in very very difficult circumstances so we got him right out of the hospital," Comey said.

The baby's doing well. He's been placed with an adoptive mom but Comey and his wife, Patrice, still watch the boy a couple times a week.

"And we've stayed very close. We'll look after him his whole life," Comey said. "It is absolutely true that as a foster parent that you in a lot of ways get more out of it than you put into it."

Leaving His Mark on the FBI

These days, Comey's pouring most of himself into charting a course for the FBI. He's on track to hire 1,500 people by October to fill positions that stayed empty during the recent federal budget crunch. And he's starting to make an imprint on some of the most important jobs in the FBI, installing more than a dozen new leaders in cities around the country and 11 more key staffers at headquarters.

The new executive assistant director of the national security branch, Andrew McCabe, once led a team that questions high value terrorism suspects. The new assistant director of the counterterrorism division, John Giacalone, helped command and coordinate FBI agents and intelligence operatives in Iraq. And in Miami, the new special agent in charge is George Piro, the man who interrogated former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Many of the newly promoted leaders have backgrounds in the military and advanced degrees in law or history.

But Comey says the FBI still has a long way to go on diversity. In 2001, the bureau settled a huge discrimination case filed by African American agents. Another lawsuit filed by a female supervisor in Seattle, brought before Comey arrived, is still moving through the courts.

"I'm very fond of slightly geeky 6 [foot] 8 white guys from the Northeast — cause I am one. But if I have a table that's just filled with me's, I'm not being advised, directed, challenged, the way I need to be," Comey said.

Back in the auditorium in Quantico, Comey said the new agents and analysts would be learning more about FBI history in the coming weeks. Not just the decades-long reign of J. Edgar Hoover, but also some of the abuses carried out in his name.

That history is troubling enough that the new FBI director is adding a stop on the recruits' annual trip to DC's monuments. After visiting the Holocaust museum, they'll go to the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, to reflect on how the FBI misused its power to harass the civil rights icon. Comey said he'll go along too, to make sure the trainees understand the lesson he's trying to impart.

There's room for improvement, too, Comey told his recruits, on the intelligence front.

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