;)
US Secretary Hillary Clinton in an interview with Christiane Amanpour earlier this week and shown today on ABC News's This Week:
Watch the video....
And so Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's US media tour begins, only hours after he arrived in New York. The first interview was with Christiane Amanpour of ABC News's This Week:
Watch the video....
UPDATE 1305 GMT: Now to the Important Question....Which Iranian official started the story of the captured troops and why?
Starting point has to be the Revolutionary Guard, given that its outlet Javan (again, not Fars, which may have repeated the story but soon deleted it) started the rumour. But with Javan soon pulling its attempted scoop and apologising, I doubt anyone will be admitting responsibility.
Indeed, Press TV brings a smile with its coverage: "Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) rejects rumors of seven US troops being detained on the border of southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchestan."
Somehow, Press TV forgets to mention who started those rumours....
UPDATE 1225 GMT: Mystery Solved. Javan, which started the story that seven US troops had been captured, has just posted that "the news is not true" and has apologised to its readers.
UPDATE 1030 GMT: An official at the Interior Ministry says at least 29 people have been killed and 111 others injured.
Bizarrely, CNN's website has yet to note the bombings.
Two car bombs, set off almost simultaneously, have killed at least 18 people and wounded about 100 in Baghdad.
At least nine people were killed in Adan Square near an office of the national security ministry in the northwest of the city. At least three others died in the western Mansour district.
A father and son were killed in western Baghdad by a magnetic bomb attached to their car, while three mortar rounds were fired into the fortified Green Zone.
Writing before yesterday's Parliamentary elections in Afghanistan, Fred Kaplan of Slate ponders, "What Can We Do About Corruption in Afghanistan?"
The analysis is not as notable for insight as it is for the utter resignation in the conclusion:
For now, Karzai seems to think that the United States has a bigger stake in the war's success than he does and, therefore, that he's the one with the leverage in this relationship. The Obama administration's challenge is to convince Karzai that if he doesn't clean up his act, he really will pay a price—we really might leave or, short of that, funnel arms, money, and other resources to provincial chiefs whose elevation would pose a challenge to Karzai's authority. This is easier said than done, and carries its own risks for Afghanistan's stability. But the alternative is to write "a blank check" and "blindly stay the course," as Obama once said he wouldn't do, and that way seems to lie a quagmire or worse.
It looks like Christine O'Donnell, the winner of Delaware's Republican primary for the US Senate, may become 2010's election poster girl, not only for the Tea Party who supported her but for all of us who like the wild 'n' wacky in US politics.
First, the mirthful chatter was about O'Donnell's 1996 comments about masturbation --- "Just Don't Do It". We, however, think it is much more intriguing to put O'Donnell's past friendships together with her current ones.
Watch the videos....
1920 GMT: Striking Back. Mehr News posts responses from eight members of Parliament, ranging from conservative to reformist, on the President's recent remarks about his office and the Majlis. The summary --- "A number of lawmakers have criticized President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s recent claim that the executive branch of government is more important than the legislature" --- is far milder than the comments summarised.
An example? Key MP Ali Motahari's statement, "Among the three branches of government, the parliament is still on top of affairs and has the authority to impeach the president and remove him from office."
1850 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Student activist Majid Tavakoli, detained since December, has reportedly met his family for the first time in two months.
Tavakoli's sentence of 8 1/2 years in prison was confirmed last week by an appeals court. Last month, he and 16 other political prisoners went on hunger strike; one of their demands was the restoration of visits with relatives.
The President, as he presses on with his appointments, his rhetoric, and his journeys --- "Look at Cyrus the Great." "Now Look at Me." --- has thrown the Supreme Leader's intervention for unity back at his feet.
So after Rafsanjani put out his coded jab at Ahmadinejad at the Assembly of Experts this week, after Karroubi tossed in his brick of a letter, and after the President persists in his grandstanding, does the Supreme Leader finally set aside a "unity" which is not happening? Does he point the finger at the Larijanis --- or others in the establishment --- and say....
"Will not someone rid me of this troublesome....?"
UPDATE 1910 GMT: Rah-e-Sabz has published the full text of the Karroubi letter to Rafsanjani.
BBC Persian is reporting that opposition figure Mehdi Karroubi has made a pointed intervention with a letter to former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, in Rafsanjani's capacity as the head of the Assembly of Experts.
Karroubi's letter, sent to Rafsanjani just before this week's bi-annual Assembly meeting, called on the Assembly to exercise its powers to "monitor the functions and institutions under the auspices of Iran's Supreme Leader". Karroubi cited problems such as "a lack of independence of the judiciary and courts", the interference of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps and Basij militia in political issues, and the IRGC's expanded involvement in Iran's economy.
And, in an even more provocative challenge, Karroubi pointed to the Assembly's powers, under the Iranian Constitution, to remove the Supreme Leader if he becomes incapable of carrying out his supervisory role.
If the humiliation of chronic unemployment, or being paid to not work, isn’t enough, with a widespread travel ban on Palestinians except in rare medical cases requiring Israeli help, no one ever gets to leave this tiny patch of sand along the sea. And with meager wages supplemented by humanitarian rations, people aren’t starving. Instead they seem to be losing any sense of hope and increasingly, according to social workers, smugglers and even the police, turning in massive numbers to cheap narcotic tablets smuggled through tunnels from Egypt. A sense of lethargy and hopelessness now pervades almost every aspect of life here.
Abu Sada, Fatah, Gaza, Hamas, Israel, Mitchell Prothero, Palestine, The National 
