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Benazir Bhutto, the leader of the Pakistan People’s Party, has been assassinated at a rally held Thursday evening near Islamabad. She appears to have been shot by the assassin, who was wearing a suicide bomb belt, which he then detonated to make sure he had finished the job. The Bhuttos are sort of the Kennedys […]

There was no midnight mass among Christians in Iraq again this year. Too dangerous. And of the estimated 800,000 Christians in the country in 2002, as few as half, 400,000, may be left. Many have fled to Syria, joining the 1.5 million Iraqi refugees there. Even some Christians still in the country have been internally […]

Iraqi Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani on Monday lashed out at Turkey for its air strikes on Iraq. Turkey says it hit terror bases. Bush strongly backed Turkey with a call to PM Erdogan. The US had depended heavily on the Kurds in Iraq. Is this the beginniing of a major rift? Turkey says that its […]

Zogby has just released a national new poll that shows that the proportion of voters who are undecided on both sides of the aisle has fallen dramatically. The chief beneficiaries of the voters making up their minds have been Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee. From there, the story differs dramatically in the two parties, however. […]

Now that all those ‘famous quotes of 2007’ are coming out, people are replaying the answer of Caitlin Upton, a contestant for Miss Teen USA from South Carolina to a question during her pageant. The exchange went like this: Question: Recent polls have shown a fifth of Americans can’t locate the United States on a […]

Juan is traveling and will post later on Monday. Until then, have a look at Barnett Rubin’s important essay, “Afghanistan: Who is to Blame?”

The USG Open Source Center translates from Urdu a critical commentator on Pervez Musharraf’s ‘defacing’ of the Pakistan constitution. Musharraf has lifted the state of emergency in preparation for elections, but there are suspicions he will have them rigged. Press restrictions remain in effect. ‘Pakistan Commentary Criticizes Musharraf for Defacing Constitution, JudiciaryCommentary by Irfan Siddiqui: […]

Hillary Clinton fired the co-chair of her New Hampshire campaign, Bill Shaheen, because he speculated that Barack Obama would be attacked by Republicans for admitting youthful drug use,if he were the nominee. She then apologized to Obama. But in this controversy, what is forgotten is that our current incumbent also admitted to youthful drug use: […]

In Shiite Iran, only a Shiite may be president. Not a Sunni Muslim, not a Christian, and not a secularist. Article 115 of the current Iranian constitution says: ‘ Article 115 The President must be elected from among religious and political personalities possessing the following qualifications: Iranian origin; Iranian nationality; administrative capacity and resourcefulness; a […]