Daily News Channel
A friend of three American hikers arrested in Iran said he believes they had no knowledge they were nearing the Iranian border while hiking in Iraq, and made "a simple and regrettable mistake." Shon Meckfessel was with the three on a hiking trip to Iraqi Kurdistan, but had stayed behind at their hotel on July 31, the day the three went missing, because he had a cold. He issued a statement to media outlets on Thursday and confirmed its authenticity to CNN.
Members of an Iranian group designated a terrorist organization by the United States and Iran say Iraqi forces attacked their camp Tuesday evening, killing at least four unarmed people and injuring about 385. However, an official with Iraq’s Interior Ministry said only 15 people were wounded by national police during a raid led by security forces at Camp Ashraf on orders from the government to take control of the city.
You don’t know whom to trust nowadays in Tehran. Members of the feared Basij paramilitary roam the streets at night, often blending in with people lounging in parks or window-shopping at the capital’s many squares
Whatever the end result of the current electoral crisis in Iran, the dramatic rise of national politics has already cast a long and enduring shadow over the geopolitics of the region.
A top Iranian general said government troops are "ready to sacrifice our lives" rather than back down in the face of protests over June’s disputed presidential election.
He’s a key Iranian politician whose name is on the lips of opponents, supporters and experts alike in the bloody aftermath of the Iran’s presidential elections. But despite the chaos that’s plagued the Islamic Republic for the past two weeks — even resulting in the brief detention of his daughter — former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has remained silent and largely unseen. The last time the world saw Iran’s assembled leadership was June 19, when Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei endorsed the victory of hard-line incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the hotly contested June 12 election at Friday prayers.
As the news of Michael Jackson’s death spread around the world June 25, the social networking site Twitter came to a virtual standstill, flooded with visitors tweeting the news. Within moments of the first breaking news reports — indicating that Jackson had suffered cardiac arrest and had been rushed via ambulance to a Los Angeles hospital — both “#michaeljackson” and “Cardiac Arrest” emerged as two of the network’s highest-rated “trending topics.” As TIME’s Michael Scherer notes, nearly three times as many tweets were posted about Michael Jackson on Thursday than either Iran or swine flu. In the hour following confirmation of his death, celebrities rushed to make their grief and condolences public: Miley Cyrus : michael jackson was my inspiration.
To the triumvirate Iranians blame for the disputed election result and ensuing violence — Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Supreme Leader Ali Khameni and their henchmen, the Basij militia — Iranians have added an unlikely candidate: state media. The wrath of many Iranians toward the state’s all-powerful organ of propaganda, the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting , known in Iran as seda va sima, has been mounting over the past two weeks. It reached a fever pitch this weekend, as state television ignored the killing of “Neda,” an Iranian woman protester shot on a Tehran street who has rapidly emerged as an iconic symbol of the opposition’s anguish over the unfolding crisis.
President Obama called Saturday for the Iranian government to refrain from violence and injustice against its own citizens. “The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching,” Obama said in a White House statement. “We mourn each and every innocent life that is lost
Observers with a working knowledge of Iranian politics have largely been able to shrug off President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s bluster and bullying, knowing the diminutive President must still answer to a far more powerful figure: Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei. Since 1989, the shadowy cleric — a former president himself — has sat at the apex of Iran’s complex hierarchy as the final word in all political and religious matters.