Los Angeles Times World

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's closes aide and confidante is back it again.  Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, the president's chief of staff, is stirring up trouble by challenging the clergy's attitudes toward art and music in unusually harsh and abrasive terms.  “Some do not ...feel and understand music, so they declare it haram," or sinful under Islam, the Persian-language Atynews reported him as saying this week. Mashaei was speaking  to a group of artists at the Four...

  Consumer inflation in Egypt has fallen to its lowest rate in 15 months, to 10.2% in November, compared to 11.7% the previous month, the state's Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics announced this week. The decrease has given the Egyptian Central Bank ...room to keep its benchmark interest rates unchanged in December to support economic growth....

In the biggest test so far of Britain's coalition government, a divided Parliament voted Thursday to nearly triple the amount that universities can charge for tuition, despite the wrath of thousands of student protesters who organized marches and sit-ins around the country.

When the first North Korean artillery shell exploded on Yeonpyeong Island, some residents burst into laughter.

Colombia's right-wing former president, Alvaro Uribe, sought contact in the final months of his term with the FARC guerrilla army in an effort to set "road maps" for new peace talks during the government of his successor, Juan Manuel Santos, leaked U.S. diplomatic cable...s show. Uribe secretly reached out to the FARC even as he pursued a hard-line campaign to eliminate the rebels by force, while publicly refusing negotiations as long as the...

Four journalists working at the country’s foremost liberal daily newspaper have been arrested and charged with security crimes, Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jaffari-Dowlatabadi announced Wednesday. The four were arrested earlier this week at the offices of Sharq, a prominen...t daily newspaper associated with the country’s reformist faction, which is under severe pressure from hardliners who have gained the upper hand in the country's political establishment. Those arrested were among the leaders of the...

  El Salvador's first leftist president, Mauricio Funes, harbored fears for his personal safety last year and suspected his offices had been bugged, newly disclosed secret U.S. cables reveal. However, the perceived threat was not from El Salvador's right wing but from m...embers of the very coalition that brought Funes to power, the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front. The cables, part of the WikiLeaks trove published this week in El Pais newspaper, recount the...

More than two years after Russia and Georgia clashed in South Ossetia, the fog of war continues to hover over Tbilisi and Moscow. According to diplomatic cables from the U.S. Embassy in Tbilisi, released by the Wikileaks website, Russia was doing everything it could -– ...including reportedly arming South Ossetian separatists with Grad missiles and spreading nasty rumors about the Georgian president's sanity -– to provoke and destabilize Georgia, long before the...

Many U.S. travelers in Mexico hold fast to a few overblown myths about culinary life here: Don't trust the water, ever, and avoid those tempting street tacos! Blogger Lesley Tellez suggests a more liberating approach. "It's a myth that eating any street food in Mexico C...ity will make you sick," writes Tellez, a former Dallas Morning News reporter who now lives in the Mexican capital....

Arabian peninsula states have adopted a conciliatory tone on Iran a little over a week after U.S. diplomatic cables released by the watchdog site WikiLeaks appeared to show serious anxiety among Arab leaders over Tehran's growing power, and even enthusiasm in some corne...rs (and at certain points) for a military attack on its controversial nuclear program. Gulf Cooperation Council Secretary-General Abdul Rahman Atiyyah stopped short of an outright repudiation, but he described...

Nasrin Sotoudeh is a leading human rights lawyer widely respected for her efforts on behalf of juveniles facing the death penalty and for her defense of prisoners of conscience. Sotoudeh had earlier been charged with threatening national security. Nasrin Sotoudeh Lang...roudi (Iran - 1963), after having completed her law studies in Tehran, devoted herself to the profession of lawyer. Her work has particularly distinguished itself for its defence of numerous human rights activists who were unjustly imprisoned for their commitment to the recognition of fundamental rights against the Iranian authorities and limited in their rights. She got also famous for her defence of indigent minors, who were tortured and sentenced to death. She also supported the women who were involved in the signature campaign "One Million Signatures Campaign" against Iran's discriminatory laws against women and in particular against the unilateral and illegitimate rights of men in the areas of divorce, polygamy and child custody. On 12.06.2008, at the National Day of Solidarity of Iranian women in Tehran, 8 protesting activists were arrested. They were then indicted for involvement in an unauthorized protest action against the Iranian authorities. Nasrin Sotoudeh, who immediately accepted their defence, was also arrested, imprisoned and then only released because she had to nurse her newly born son. The awardee has published the following article on human rights: “Women’s Rights, before and after revolution”, Nameh Magazine Feb. (2004) “Women’s Rights, before and after revolution”, Nameh Magazine February (2004) “Who is responsible for children rights?”, Aban, 139. (2004) “Who is responsible for children rights?”, Aban, 139. (2004) “Women’s Rights in constitutional laws: Japan, Russia, United States of America, Bulgaria and Iran”, jomhouriat Newspaper, 9. (2004) “Chain murders in Iran”, Aban Magazine. (Nov. 1999) “Women world day and Iran’s law”, Aban, 68. (1999) “Political crimes in the law and criminology”, jame’eh Newspaper. (1998). In her homeland, she is constantly working together with the Nobel Peace Prize winner of the year 2003, Shirin Ebadi. Her constant commitment to human rights as well as to the defence of human rights defenders, have led HRI to confer visibility and international recognition to her courage and efforts. MERANO (Italy), December 2008 The Administrative Board of HRI The President RA Dr. WOLFGANG WIELANDER

The president of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, has received almost $1 billion in aid from President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela -- sometimes in "suitcases full of cash" sent from Caracas -- a relationship that prompted a U.S. diplomat to dub Ortega a "Chavez Mini-Me," leaked U....S. diplomatic cables show. Ortega, the cables say, also funds his party's political campaigns with money from drug traffickers and once bribed a prominent Nicaraguan boxer to stump...

  Calling the recent legislative elections "a moral and a political catastrophe," the Independent Coalition for Elections Observation is urging President Hosni Mubarak to dissolve the new parliament. The coalition of three Egyptian human rights organizations has questio...ned the constitutionality of the new parliament, especially after numerous violations and irregularities were reported and documented before and during the electoral process. "The elections were full of widespread violations that brought Egypt at least 15 years back," the coalition said in a...

Defying a severe crackdown against the opposition and widespread political repression, Iranian students on Tuesday staged small anti-government protests throughout the country on the anniversary of Students Day. Amateur video footage taken during illegal protests on cam...puses throughout the country showed students chanting slogans from last year's huge demonstrations against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose widely disputed reelection last year spurred months of unrest.  "Mahmoud, you traitor," they chanted on the grounds of Tehran's...

The first round of parliamentary elections in Egypt left many election observers frustrated. The frustration comes from numerous media and domestic-monitoring reports that documented election violations, including an organized intervention for ruling National Democrati...c Party candidates, judges and election observers blocked from doing their jobs, widespread vote-buying, and violence at polling places. [Editor's note: Analysts of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace are included among contributors to Babylon & Beyond....

Are Iran's attempts to deal with international sanctions a cause of the extremely high air-pollution levels afflicting the capital city of Tehran? A report Monday on the Persian-language news website Khabaronline says record pollution choking Tehran for the last month m...ay be the result of low-quality gasoline Iran has been producing to counter the effects of international sanctions. Iran, one of the world's biggest oil producers, nevertheless had to import much of its refined...

Historic Olvera Street Plaza in Los Angeles this weekend hosted the annual Dia de los Payasos, or Day of the Clowns, which featured nearly 60 entertainers, colorful costumes and lots of smiles. Read the full story on Dia de los Payasos by L.A. Times staff writer Carla ...Rivera. Photo: Entertainers gather in downtown Los Angeles on Sunday for Day of the Clowns....

  Egyptian authorities called in three U.S shark experts to help in the investigation of shark attacks that left one tourist dead and four others severely injured in the Red Sea resort of Sharm El Sheikh. The decision was prompted by the death of a 70-year-old tourist f...rom Germany, who died minutes after she was mauled by a shark on Sunday....

At Saudi Arabia's urging, Morocco broke ties with Iran and began a domestic campaign against Moroccan Shiites in exchange for economic trade-offs, an Egyptian diplomat told sources at the U.S. Embassy in Rabat, according to a leaked U.S. diplomatic cable published by th...e Lebanese newspaper Al Akhbar. "[The diplomat] said goading Iran, a country with which it had limited economic interests, and demonizing the Shi'a, a powerless minority group, was a small...

As Turkey heads toward national elections next year, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) finds itself in a strong position. A major test for the AKP and opposition parties was the referendum in September — the results constituted a significant defeat for the ...opposition. [Editor's note: Analysts of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace are included among contributors to Babylon & Beyond....