Iranian security officials defused a bomb planted on a domestic passenger plane, officials said on Sunday, the latest incident of violence ahead of next month's presidential election. The incident occurred just two days after 25 people were killed in a powerful bomb attack on a mosque in Zahedan in southeastern Iran claimed by a shadowy Sunni rebel group.
"Security officials of the Islamic Republic Revolutionary Guards acted well and the incident caused no casualties," Reza Jafarzadeh, spokesman for Iran's Civil Aviation Organisation, told the state broadcaster.
A top security official blamed Iran's "enemies" for the plane bomb, saying they wanted to stoke tensions ahead of the June 12 presidential election. "The suspicious package and the details of the sabotage operation in the Tehran-Ahvaz Boeing is under investigation," Mohammad Hassan Kazemi, the head of the Revolutionary Guards aviation security operations, told the official IRNA news agency. "I do not confirm a link between this and the Zahedan operation," he said. "But we believe our enemies want to create a threatening environment before the presidential election and exploit the open space in the country and spark despair among people."
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#1
...A top security official blamed Iran's "enemies" for the plane bomb... Maybe Iran's "enemies" are tired of the s##t that comes from Iran.
Sarcasm off: :-)
[Al Arabiya Latest] Iranian presidential hopeful Mir Hossein Mousavi vowed on Saturday to review laws which are "unfair" towards women if he wins next month's election.
In a speech to about 1,500 women at a sports complex in southern Tehran, Mousavi said he will "review all laws which are deemed discriminatory and unfair to women by introducing the needed bills in the parliament."
Addressing a cheering crowd of women screaming "Mousavi! Mousavi!," the moderate candidate, who served as prime minister during the 1980-1988 war with Iraq, said he would work towards taking the moral police patrols off the streets if elected in the June 12 poll.
Over the past few years, such patrols have strictly enforced the Islamic dress code on women in Iran and especially in Tehran.
Women who are deemed inappropriately dressed are usually hauled to a detention center where they must sign a pledge, promising to dress properly.
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Posted by: Fred ||
05/31/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
"Have finished reviewing---too lenient by far".
[Al Arabiya Latest] Although there is peace and calm as Lebanon prepares for its upcoming elections, there is one place where the war continues to rage and that is on election banners where candidates promote themselves and what they stand for.
The competition between rival March 14 and March 8 camps has been manifested in a war of banners as parties try to mobilize as many supporters as possible, Al Arabiya News Channel reported Tuesday.
This year there have been less banners with the candidates' pictures, as was the case during previous elections, and more with slogans that promote the ideology of each party.
While for candidates election banners serve their political agendas, they have become a source of entertainment for the Lebanese people as everyday they wait to see the latest ideas invading streets, buildings and bridges.
"Resist with your vote" is the slogan the Shiite resistance group Hezbollah uses as it calls upon voters to resist corruption and sectarianism. But some argue that the slogan has become old and ineffective and criticize Hezbollah for not entering the banner war with the same enthusiasm as its ally the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM).
For observers, FPM, which is calling for change, is winning the war with its creative banners that use a variety of slogans, creative pictures and speak to all segments of society.
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05/31/2009 00:00 ||
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[Jerusalem Post Middle East] Leading up to Lebanon's June 7 elections, Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah called Friday for unity in the country and asserted that the group "cannot be disarmed by force."
Speaking at the "Resistance and Liberation Festival" marking nine years since the IDF withdrawal from southern Lebanon, Nasrallah said that were Hizbullah to win next Sunday's legislative election, it would "strengthen and arm the [Lebanese] army, and empower it with defense of Lebanon."
Iran would "gladly supply it," he added.
In a speech that was broadcast on local television stations and attracted crowds in the hundreds of thousands at video screens across Beirut, he called for "a national unity government, with cooperation based on lessons from the past."
Nasrallah went on to say that Agriculture Minister Silvan Shalom had "said that [Israel] would turn the international community against Hizbullah... and place us on their list of terror organizations."
Though Israel remains a "dangerous challenge" for the group, he said, "the option of another conflict is still far off... though it does exist."
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Posted by: Fred ||
05/31/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
As gladly as they'll fight to the last drop of your blood.
[Al Arabiya Latest] Iran executed in public on Saturday three men convicted of involvement in a bomb attack on a mosque that killed 25 people, the official IRNA news agency reported.
The bombing in a crowded Shiite mosque on Thursday evening wounded more than 120 people in the southeastern city of Zahedan, two weeks before a presidential election in the Islamic Republic.
"Three people convicted of being involved in the recent terrorist bombing in Zahedan were hanged in public on Saturday morning," IRNA said, adding that the executions took place near the mosque where the bombing took place.
"The terrorists Haji Noti Zehi, Gholam Rasoul Shahi Zehi and Zabihollah Naroui were hanged at 6:20 am (0130 GMT) near the Amir al-Momenin mosque in public IRNA quoted the official, Sistan-Baluchestan judiciary public relations chief Hojatoeslam Ebrahim Hamidi, as saying."
"They confessed to illegally bringing explosives into Iran and giving them to the main person behind the bombing."
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BEIRUT - Lebanon has identified its first confirmed three cases of the new H1N1 flu, the health minister said on Saturday.
A week ago we had a certain situation that has been contained ... there is no virus in Lebanon as such, but there are three cases who came from abroad. One is Lebanese and two are not Lebanese, Health Minister Mohammad Khalifeh told a news conference.
Khalifeh said a group of Lebanese were attending a training seminar in Spain at an institute where the flu strain was later detected. The group was quarantined for a week when they arrived in Beirut and one Lebanese man was discovered to have been infected but was now cured.
This person was treated in the right way from the start ... the person can go home today, Khalifeh said.
The other two cases were Canadian citizens visiting Lebanon, Khalifeh said, adding that the woman and child were on their way to being cured.
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Posted by: Steve White ||
05/31/2009 00:00 ||
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TEHRAN - Iran summoned Pakistans ambassador over the deadly bombing of a mosque in the southeast after Sunni rebels reportedly claimed responsibility, the official IRNA news agency reported on Saturday.
I hear the Syrians did it ...
Mohammad Bakhsh Abbasi was summoned after Irans state television quoted the pan-Arab channel Al-Arabiya as saying that the Jandullah (Soldiers of God) group said it was behind Thursdays mosque attack which killed 25 people.
According to state television, the chief of the Iranian armed forces, General Hassan Firouzabadi, said on Saturday that Iran has located the base of the groups head and informed Pakistans government of his arrest.
The Iranian authorities said they immediately arrested three men involved in the bombing. The trio were executed on Saturday morning near the mosque in Zahedan city, the capital of Sistan-Baluchestan province.
That was quick ...
In recent years, the restive province has been the scene of a deadly insurgency by Jundallah, which is strongly opposed to the government of predominantly Shiite Iran. The province has a substantial Sunni minority and lies on a major narcotics-smuggling route from Afghanistan and Pakistan.
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Posted by: Steve White ||
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#1
Yeah... but.... "Iran hangs three over deadly mosque bombing"
So you just went on the street to find 3 inconviences, hung them, then accuse pakistan?
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Iranian security officials defused a bomb planted on a domestic passenger plane, officials said on Sunday, the latest incident of violence ahead of next month's presidential election. The incident occurred just two days after 25 people were killed in a powerful bomb attack on a mosque in Zahedan in southeastern Iran claimed by a shadowy Sunni rebel group.
[Jerusalem Post Middle East] Leading up to Lebanon's June 7 elections, Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah called Friday for unity in the country and asserted that the group "cannot be disarmed by force."
[Al Arabiya Latest] Iran executed in public on Saturday three men convicted of involvement in a bomb attack on a mosque that killed 25 people, the official IRNA news agency reported.
