With elections for the lower house of parliament scheduled for Nov. 28 and for the presidency in 2011, Egyptian officials are emphasizing that the country does not need international observers. Its elections, they say, will proceed according to well-established laws and constitutional precepts.

Unfortunately, these statements don't reflect the country's history: one with rigged and often violent elections. In fact, Egyptians' trust in formal politics -- never great -- has deteriorated to the point that several opposition parties will boycott the elections, and many members of participating parties do not want to legitimize the existing system.

Assuming no international observers are present, how can Egyptians and outsiders tell how fair the elections are in the end? One important signal will be whether the Higher Electoral Commission extends credentials to the approximately 14,000 Egyptian civil society activists seeking to monitor them. In June elections for the small upper house of parliament, the commission gave credentials to only a small percentage of monitors at the eleventh hour, and then failed to instruct poll workers to let them in.

On Sept. 1, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad celebrated with the residents of Qarawat Bani Hassan the inauguration of a mile-long road linking the small West Bank village to a spring its residents consider the lifeline of the community. It was called Freedom Road.

While Fayyad was on a trip to Japan this week, hoping to get more funding for his two-year “Palestine: Ending the Occupation, Establishing the State” program, of which building that road was one project, Israel on Wednesday destroyed the road, which is located in Area C of the West Bank.

According to the Oslo breakdown of the West Bank, Area C, which makes up more than 60% of the West Bank land, remains under full Israeli military control. But Area C is also an important segment in Fayyad’s state building program, crucial to his dream of setting up the necessary infrastructure for a viable Palestinian state by August 2011.

Israeli officials had informed Fayyad and the village residents that they would not allow the road because it was located in an area under its full control.

For the second time in two months, a regional leader has addressed Israel in Lebanon.

This time, however, the words were a lot less harsh.

In a speech delivered in northern Lebanon on Wednesday, Turkish premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan called on the tiny country's neighbor Israel to embrace peace and stop "provocations," for its own good.

"The Israeli government has to see and understand this: if there is peace in this region, Israel wins as much as the region. If there is war and clash in this region, Israeli citizens are harmed as much as the people in the region," he was quoted as saying by Turkey's semiofficial Anatolia news agency during his official visit to Lebanon. "Thus, we, one more time, invite Israel to peace, return from its mistakes and apologize both for the interest of Israel and the people in the region."

Erdogan's remarks were far more diplomatically worded and more conciliatory than the tirade Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad delivered in south Lebanon last month, in which he said that "the world should understand that the Zionists will go."

But despite his carefully chosen words, Erdogan was clear in his message.

He called on Israel to immediately put an end to its "provoking activities" which he said put the region and the world in danger, according to the Anatolia news agency.

Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini toured the Gaza Strip on Wednesday and called on Israel to facilitate more movement of goods and people between the seaside enclave and the West Bank.

During a visit to a U.N. school in northern Gaza Strip, Frattini said Israel must do more to open the crossings.

"It is true that there have been improvements on the situation, but this is not enough."

Where is your Sri Lankan from?

It's a nasty old joke in Lebanon, one that gets even less funny every time a foreign maid or nanny is reportedly abused.

But activist Wissam Saliby turns this trope of casual racism on its head in a new satirical video he hopes will shine a light on the conditions of African and Asian domestic workers in Lebanon.

In Sri Lankiete Libnanieh (My Sri Lankan is Lebanese), the roles of madam and maid are switched as two spoiled housewives played by Asian women discuss the comparative laziness and stupidity of their Lebanese and Syrian maids, who are treated badly.

The Interior Ministry said a riot started just after dawn in the Omraneya district when hundreds of Copts tried to "illegally transform" a Christian community center "into a church without obtaining the necessary authorization for doing so."

Demonstrators broke windows, sabotaged residential buildings and blocked the road leading to the area. "With our blood and our souls, we will sacrifice our lives for you, oh cross," the protesters chanted.

Police dispersed the crowd by firing tear gas and rubber bullets. Protesters responded by throwing Molotov cocktails at security officers, who then hurled rocks at protesters from a nearby bridge overlooking the construction site.

Makarios Jad Shukr, a 19-year-old student, was shot in the leg and died on his way to hospital, officials said. Unnamed medical sources said three other protesters were seriously wounded and remained in critical condition.

Air pollution levels in the Iranian capital of Tehran have gotten so high that authorities declared Wednesday a public holiday.

All state-run organizations (and there are many in Iran), banks and universities were shuttered (link in Persian*) by order of the Emergency Committee for Tehran's Air Pollution.

Tehran's population has exploded from several million 30 years ago to about 12 million.

-- Los Angeles Times

Photo: A view of Iran's capital city of Tehran on Wednesday as air pollution in Tehran reached critical levels again, forcing the government to declare a public holiday. Credit: Abedin Taherkenareh / European Pressphoto Agency

*Mistakenly described as Arabic in previous version.

[Updated at 9:52 a.m.: Death toll revised and reference to Yemen media report report of alleged Al Qaeda responsibility added.]

A car bomb exploded along a procession of Shiite Muslims in northern Yemen, killing at least 17 people and raising concerns that Al Qaeda was seeking to exploit religious differences in a country engulfed in rebellion.

The blast occurred in a rugged province where the government and Shiite rebels, known as Houthis, are under a tense ceasefire in fighting that has killed hundreds and displaced thousands. No one claimed immediate responsibility but a tribal leader told Yemen media that Al Qaeda carried out the attack as retaliation against the Houthis for detaining five Al Qaeda operatives earlier this year.

Responding to increasing demands to allow international observers to monitor Sunday's parliamentary elections, the Egyptian National Council for Human Rights stressed its ability to supervise the ballot without help from the outside.

Speaking this week to the foreign media after a meeting with the European Union's delegation on election preparations, Mokbel Shaker, vice president of the NCHR, rebuffed as an insult any suggestion for international observers. 

NCHR's assurances come less than a week after a diplomatic tug of war between the U.S and Europe on one side and the Egyptian foreign ministry on the other. Washington had urged Cairo to allow foreign observers, but the foreign ministry criticized the suggestion as interference in Egypt's affairs.

In a struggle for Palestinian statehood in which every acre of land is a precious commodity, should selling West Bank property to an Israeli -- something viewed by many Palestinians as treason -- be punishable by death?

That’s the question now facing the Palestinian Authority and the budding Palestinian courts system as they attempt to rebuff the rising trend of Israeli buyers, often right-wing settler groups, offering exorbitant prices for West Bank land in an effort to strengthen Israel’s claim on the occupied territory.

A recent court case in which a Palestinian from the West Bank city of Bethlehem was charged with selling property to Israelis using forged documents highlighted the complexity and sensitivity of this issue.

Last month the greeting was "Khosh amadid," Persian for welcome when Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited Beirut to assert his political influence in the country.

This month, it's "Merhaba," Turkish for welcome in honor of the Turkish premier, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is scheduled to arrive in Beirut this week in a move that further illustrates how tiny Lebanon is at the whim of foreign powers. 

Erdogan's s visit is likely aimed at attempting to calm the severe political tensions stemming from a United Nations-backed tribunal into the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese premier Rafik Hariri. Turkey will likely use its role as a political and economic regional heavyweight to strengthen ties between the two countries, analysts say.

"It's extremely important for Turkey to maintain stability in Lebanon," Mensur Akgun, head of the foreign policy program at the Istanbul-based independent think tank Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation, or TESEV, told Babylon & Beyond. "They will do whatever they can do to calm parties."

Two brothers of the Syrian Catholic denomination were working as blacksmiths in their workshop in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Monday when gunmen stormed their workplace. Both were shot dead, police said, part of an apparent campaign against Iraq's small Christian community.

A source in the provincial government said some citizens managed to intervene and thwart another attack that same day against a  Christian family in eastern Mosul, forcing the assailants to flee.

-- A Times correspondent in Mosul, Iraq 

Photo: Iraqi Christian relatives grieve over the coffin of one of two brothers during their funeral in Hamdaniya, Iraq, on Nov. 23, 2010, a day after they were gunned down inside their workshop in the restive northern city of Mosul. Credit: Mujahed Mohammed / AFP/Getty Images