IRAN: Telecom executive accused of spying for Israel is sentenced to death

Iranian authorities this week sentenced the manager of a telecommunications company to death on charges of spying for Israel.

Ali Ashtari, who sold communications and security equipment to the Iranian government, was arrested about 18 months ago on charges of "engaging in espionage for [Israel's] Mossad intelligence service," Iranian news agencies reported.

The 45-year-old allegedly confessed to the crime and asked for mercy. He told the judge he accepted a $50,000 "loan" from Israelis to get him out of financial trouble, according to news agencies. The website of an state-owned Iranian television station quoted an anonymous intelligence official alleging that Ashtari handed Israelis sensitive information about Iran's communications system and nuclear program.

He's got 20 days to appeal his capital sentence.

In Iran, it's tough to figure out who's an actual spy and who's a casualty of political infighting. The tubby, balding Ashtari hardly seems like a swashbuckling secret agent. And any foreign correspondent or geologist working in the field will quickly recognize the satellite telecommunications equipment shown in the courtroom picture as standard tools of the trade, stuff you can buy on the open market.

LEBANON: University team builds Arab world's first solar-powered car

A team of engineering students and their professor have built what they describe as the Arab world's  first solar-powered car, according to a news release.

It is named "Apollo's Chariot," in reference to the Greek god of the sun. The steel and fiberglass one-seater (pictured) is about 18 feet long and 6 feet wide and weighs about 1,500 pounds.

A bunch of engineering wizards led by  professor Daniel Asmar at the American University of Beirut designed the car over nine months at a cost of $25,000, paid for mostly by corporate sponsors.

"With its aerodynamic design, the futuristic-looking vehicle glides over the road quietly," the news release said.

Three dozen photovoltaic cells on the car's body produce about 1,000 watts of electricity, stored in batteries built into the car.

During a demonstration this week, engineering student Elie Maalouf, one of the designers, drove the vehicle for a few minutes. He took it forward, backward, along a curb and up a hill.

So far, the car has reached a top speed of about 18 mph. But its designers say it can go as fast as 40 mph on the highway.

"It looks like a rocket, but moves like a swan," said Amin Kanafani, another student on the design team.

The designers hope to represent Lebanon in next year's World Solar Challenge, a 2,000-mile Australian car rally for sun-powered vehicles.

-- Borzou Daragahi in Beirut

Photo: Engineering student Elie Maalouf backs up the the solar-powered Arab-manufactured car on the American University of Beirut campus. Credit: AUB Press Office

IRAN: Bending on nuclear talks?

Is Iran ready to talk?

After spurning European offers to return to the negotiating table over its nuclear enrichment program, a powerful Iranian politician said his country is ready to compromise.

Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a relative moderate who heads the country's powerful Expediency Council, told worshipers gathered for Friday prayer in Tehran today that negotiation is "the best thing" to resolve the dispute between the West and Tehran over Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Iran has thus far declined to sit down with European officials to craft another package of incentives in exchange for suspending its nuclear enrichment program. Powerful voices in the Iranian political scene have demanded that Iran not budge one inch on the issue of enrichment.

Iran argues that it is permitted to enrich uranium under the terms of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which allows signatories to develop nuclear technology so long as they abide by international safeguards. The U.S. counters that Iran's past nuclear activities place a cloud of suspicion over Iran's drive to master the enrichment of uranium, the key technical hurdle in developing a nuclear weapons program as well as creating fuel to power an electricity plant.

ISRAEL: Internet censorship

A bill proposing internet providers block access to pornography, gambling and other sites passed a first reading (out of 3 needed to finalize legislation) in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, recently. Intending to protect minors from adult content, the bill sparked debates questioning the effectiveness, ethics and motives behind it. Proposed by Amnon Cohen, a legislator from the ultra-orthodox party Shas, the bill automatically became suspect and was interpreted by some as an attempt to impose a conservative religious agenda on liberal Israelis. Some oppose the notion on principle, others object on grounds that it is ineffective and yet others feel it puts Israel in bad company.

Exactly how the screening would be done isn't entirely clear yet. One option is that such sites will be blocked by default and users seeking access may ask their provider to remove the block, after proving they are of age. Currently, some 70,000 users already subscribe to screening services of their own initiative, says communications minister Ariel Atias, who let numbers do the talking: 60% of Israeli children surf pornographic sites, 47% have internet access in their private rooms, 40% have given out information to adults and 65% of the parents don't care what their kids do on the web."Anyone with eyes in his head and children at home doesn't want them visiting such sites," he said, adding that this proposal will "force customers to be active, take responsibility."

Gadi Shimshon, an internet analyst, objects. "we all want to protect children," but having to actively request adult sites unblocked will put people on "shame lists." "Get out of my pants," wrote critic Raanan Shaked, envisioning the person handling his request, loudly:"Unblock the porno sites for Raanan Shaked! Orly, are you there?  Yes, the porn! For Shaked!" Naturally, the call would be recorded.

Israel has the highest percentage of internet users in the Middle East but evidently doesn't like sharing certain practices with with some of its distant neighbors. Headlines such as "Internet censorship: not only in Iran and Saudi Arabia" and "Good morning Pakistan" reflect feelings about censorship- and countries believed to employ it.

"If you too understand that Iran is here," reads the flier (shown right) inviting people to a protest Wednesday , adding: "so long as we're still allowed to demonstrate here". The organizers, 'Surfing to Freedom' , stress they abhor the violence, humiliation and exploitation associated with pornographic content but say this isn't the issue: "the movement was born to avert a harsh blow to Israeli democracy". They asked protesters to come dressed in black and-- of course-- modestly .

— Batsheva Sobelman in Jerusaelem

Photo: "SO long as we're still allowed to demonstrate...If you too understand that Iran is here, if you believe freedom of expression is vital to our future, if you believe this crosses the line...surfing to freedom starts here!"

IRAN: A press summary of nuclear defiance

The U.S., Europe and other powers hope to get Iran to stop its uranium enrichment program by offering it a package of economic and security incentives.

But judging by recent murmurs in the Iranian press, the conservatives now dominating Iran’s political and security establishment don’t sound like they’re ready to deal.

On the contrary, the right-wing Iranian press has a struck a triumphant tone and dismissed any compromise over the nuclear program, which the leadership of the Islamic Republic is trying to embed into the country’s national identity.

JORDAN: Queen Rania on YouTube quest

Queen Rania, the glamorous monarch of Jordan, is trying to become the queen of YouTube.

She’s using the video website to reach out people around the world. Last week, she launched a black and white video on YouTube asking young people to join in a global dialogue to dismantle misconceptions about Muslims and the Arab world.

"In a world where it's so easy to connect to one another, we still remain very much disconnected. There's a whole world of wonder out there that we cannot appreciate with stereotypes," the queen says in the video, below.

In the video, Rania urges the viewers to send her their opinions and the stereotypes they hold about Arabs and Muslims. She said she wants people "to know the real Arab world unedited, unscripted and unfiltered."

IRAN: A distress signal via Facebook

Amid the notifications prodding me to become a vampire or a zombie and one-line shout-outs from friends around the world, the plea for help on the social networking website Facebook stood out starkly.

The message, written in all capitals to underscore its urgency, came from Pooya Dayanim, an Iranian American living in the Los Angeles area:

TURKISH AUTHORITIES HAVE ARRESTED AMIR-FARSHAD EBRAHIMI, A PROMINENT GERMAN-BASED IRANIAN JOURNALIST ON CHARGES THAT HE COLLABORATED WITH THE FBI IN THE FLIGHT OF A PROMINENT IRANIAN OFFICIAL LAST YEAR. TURKISH AUTHORITIES HAVE ADVISED MR. EBRAHIMI THAT IN ORDER TO AVOID ANOTHER SIMILAR INCIDENT THEY ARE DEPORTING HIM IN THE NEXT FEW HOURS BACK TO IRAN WHERE HE WILL SURELY BE TORTURED AND EXECUTED.

MOROCCO: World's first Facebook felon freed

Justice failed him, but the king’s word set free a man who was sentenced to three years in a Moroccan prison for a Facebook prank.

Fouad Mourtada’s crime was to create a fake Facebook account in the name of Moroccan Prince Moulay Rachid, the brother of King Mohammed VI.

It’s not normally a big deal. If you search the social networking site, you’ll find fake profiles for George Bush, Nicolas Sarkozy, Osama Bin Laden and many others. The 26-year-old engineer said he believed it was just a “fun” thing to do.

But royal authorities were offended. They condemned him. Mourtada was  summoned to a Casablanca courthouse. During his trial, Mourtada insisted the creation of the profile was just a joke. In a statement to the Committee of Support for Fouad Mourtada, the detainee said that he admired the prince, and did not think his act was hurtful:

I never thought that by creating a profile of his highness prince Moulay Rachid I was harming him in any way. I, as a matter of fact, did not send any message from that account to anyone. It was just a joke, a gag.

Nevertheless the judge sentenced him to three years in the slammer.

ISRAEL: Spies who blog

Facing competition from a lucrative high-tech industry at home, Israel's domestic spy agency shed a bit of its secretive image two years ago by creating newspaper ads and a Web site to list available jobs and solicit applicants. In a new feature of the campaign, the Shin Bet this week unveiled a blog in which its techies write about their work lives in an effort to attract more of their ilk to the ranks.

The agency, deeply involved in Israel's battles against Palestinian militants, conducts surveillance and interrogations. But the bloggers, who sit at office computer terminals, get less than their share of adventure. So far they sound more concerned with their salaries and knocking off work early enough to spend time with the kids.

"A," a programming engineer, writes that he heard the Shin Bet was looking for high-tech workers and imagined the fictional Counter-Terrorism Unit from the hit TV series "24." The bloggers are identified only by the first letter of their names and appear in black silhouette on the site.

"Who wouldn't want to imagine themselves working in the command-and-control center of the CTU?" wrote "A," before conceding that his job is somewhat less exciting. "Though it's really unfair, I didn't get a siren to put on my car, and I too have to sit in traffic jams."

Brandy, in a reader response to the blog, said she was disappointed. "Maybe I've watched too many James Bond movies," she wrote, "but you make it sound gray and charmless."

— Richard Boudreaux in Jerusalem

Image: www.shin-tech.org.il

ISRAEL: Facebook face-off

As fellow blogger Borzou Daragahi has already noted, Facebook is huge in Lebanon. The social networking site has already become a major force in Lebanese politics and society.

Now Facebook has been drawn into the black hole-like gravitational pull of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Palestinian members in the West Bank were recently outraged to discover their hometown in their Facebook biographies had been changed from Palestine to Israel. After a brief outcry, the change was reversed. But now Israeli residents in settlements throughout the West Bank are outraged that THEIR hometown has been changed from Israel to Palestine.

The conflict spills over into Facebook’s groups section as well. The “Palestine is a country!” group has over 1,900 members while “It’s not ‘Palestine’ It’s ‘Israel!” has more than 13,000.

Controversy sprung up again last week when a Facebook group honoring Alaa Abu Dheim, the Palestinian gunman who killed eight religious students in Jerusalem on March  6. That group currently has 79 members, while a pair of groups urging that the Abu Dheim group be deleted have 272.

— Ashraf Khalil in Jerusalem

Image: Palestinians don't have a state, but they do have a Facebook page, with nearly 35,000 members.

IRAN: Nuclear showdown

Monday's the day the United Nations Security Council is supposed to consider slapping sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program.

The Washington Post, in a weekend story picked up by the LAT, desribed a stormy meeting in which International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors confronted Iranian officials with documents that purportedly showed Iran worked on sophisticated technologies normally used in a nuclear weapons program:

...the watchdog agency said that Tehran had not credibly explained documents that appeared to point to research programs devoted to uranium processing, high explosives and missile design — all of which can be used in making nuclear weapons.

Iran angrily rejected the documents as forgeries.

Iran is currently cooperating with international inspectors trying to figure out the nature of Iran's nuclear program. In the past, it has warned that it might cease doing so if the U.N. comes up with more sanctions against Iran.

On Sunday, Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Mohammed Ali Hosseini refused to take a stance on what would happen in the event of a U.N. vote against Iran. "Let the resolution come and then, based on the content, we will decide," he told reporters.

Inside Iran more dissent emerged last week against the government's headlong confrontation over the nuclear issue. Speaking at a foreign policy seminar in Tehran last Wednesday former nuclear negotiator Hassan Rowhani harshly criticized the foreign policy of Presidnet Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

There are norms in the world. That does not mean we should  be submissive to the world. But we ought to act soft-spokenly and logically. What is the border between interaction, confrontation and submission?  Have we managed to agree on these terms?  We cannot afford to talk tough with the world. We should behave in a way in the diplomatic world that draws benefit for us and diminishes threat against us.

— Ramin Mostaghim in Tehran and Borzou Daragahi in Baghdad

Photo: The U.N. Security Council meets. Credit: U.N. website

IRAN: Nuclear bomb as metaphor

There are few signs that Iran is going to back down on U.S. demands ahead of possible U.N. Security Council sanctions this weekend. Washington is in a tizzy over Iran's continued enrichment of uranium, a step in the process for making a nuclear bomb as well as fuel for a power plant.

Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati is a high-ranking cleric close to the highest echelons of power in Iran. He delivered a fiery and defiant Friday prayer speech directed at the West:

The International Atomic Energy Agency has reported that Iran has replied to all questions. The Security Council and the U.S. and its allies should be ashamed of taking our dossier up. But whatever you do, our people will not back down and our borders are a nuclear weapon. Except for nuclear weapons, all other peaceful nuclear activities, including uranium enrichment, are open to us. Our people in the rallies of the revolution are our bombs. We do not need nuclear bombs. You make bombs.

Maybe to lighten the mood, Jannati also advised the Iranian people to avoid "committing sins" during the upcoming Persian New Year holidays.

— Ramin Mostaghim in Tehran

Photo: Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, a high-ranking cleric who often speaks for the Iranian government, is shown speaking at a Friday prayer service last year. Credit: Abedin Taherkenareh/EPA

ISRAEL: Olmert new kid on the blog block

"With Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's departure on a diplomatic visit to Japan, we have decided — for the first time — to post a blog on the Prime Minister's Office website," says a statement from the prime minister's office. The blog, it says, is aimed at allowing surfers to learn about the visit and get regular updates, as well as serving as another means of increasing transparency of the PM's activities. Comments will be welcome.

With this, Olmert joins President Shimon Peres, who has been blogging for the Israeli daily Haaretz for several months.  Peres, now turning his famous one-liners into onliners, posted this in October: "In order to maintain our identity, we pray, throughout the world, in Hebrew, and in order to maintain our modernity, we use English."

— Batsheva Sobelman in Jerusalem

ISRAEL: Digital gap between Arabs and Jews

The gap between Israel's Jews and the 20% of its population who are Arab citizens has been measured in many ways. The Arabs' rates of unemployment and infant mortality are twice the national average; investment in public education is about twice as high per Jewish pupil compared with per Arab pupil.

Asmaa Ganayem, director of the technology center at Israel's Al Qasemi Academic College of Education, has turned up a new indicator: the digital gap. She found that 72.5% of Jewish households are connected to the Internet, compared to 52.5% of Arab homes. Her research, reported this week by Israel's ynetnews.com, shows that the gap widened between 2002 and 2005, but has narrowed since.

A separate study by Gustavo Mesch at the University of Haifa offered explanations for the disparity: lower exposure to the Internet at Israeli Arab workplaces and more negative attitudes toward new technology among Arabs. The researchers said the gap could be reduced by integrrating the Internet into Arab school curricula and adding the Arabic language to more Israeli government websites.

— Richard Boudreaux in Jerusalem

IRAQ: Warily we roll along

The untutored might mistake it for the kind of farm machinery seen rolling down roads in California's Imperial and Central valleys, a hay baler maybe. It's not.

That long gizmo with multiple tires attached to the front of the lead vehicle in some Marine convoys is a "mine roller," meant to detonate pressure-plate mines in front of the vehicle instead of beneath, thus decreasing the chances of death and injury.

The Marine Corps bought 150 of them for $14.35 million from General Dynamics Land Systems in Sterling Heights, Mich.

The biggest killer of Marines in Iraq is the roadside bomb. Rare is the outpost that doesn't keep in a prominent place a list of Marines and Navy corpsmen killed that way.

Humvee drivers say the land roller makes the vehicle harder to steer but that the enhanced "survivability" is worth the extra effort.

—Tony Perry in Al Asad

MIDDLE EAST: Stop that download!

Two cables beneath the Mediterranean Sea have been damaged, which may seem quaint and old world, but the result is a major slow-down in Egyptian cyberspace. Connecting to the Internet may take minutes, surfing is a disaster. Bloggers, judging by the scenes at cyber-cafes, are restless balls of nerves, sipping espressos, their fingers still, forlorn. With limited accessibility, the Egyptian government has asked Internet users to stop downloading songs and movies, to make connectivity better for businesses.

"Two of our cables are affected; everyone will go onto a third cable," Mohammed Taymur, Egypt's Telecommunications Ministry spokesman, told AFP. "But that will not be enough bandwidth. The cable will be overloaded and no one will be able to get access. . . People should know how to use the Internet because people who download music and films are going to affect business who have more important things to do."

The guy downloading the most recent episode of Lost, or those unmentionable films that are short on dialogue but big on, shall we say, passion, may not find Taymur's argument convincing. They may find it LOL. But it's slow going, either way. The damaged cables are also affecting service across the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia and Yemen.  Repairs may take days. It took seven minutes to open up the page to write this post. How long it will take to actually file it, no one knows, but (my apologies to big business) here goes. . . .click

— Jeffrey Fleishman in Cairo

IRAN: More nuclear juice

Six shipments down and just two more to go before all 82 tons of Russian nuclear fuel to fire up the light-water reactor in the southern Iranian city of Bushehr are delivered.

Number six arrived Thursday morning, according to Iran's official Islamic Republic News Agency.

Iran's Atomic Energy Production and Development Co. said the the 11-ton Russian shipment has already been sent down to Bushehr, a Persian Gulf port city once known mostly for its lively music and traditional architecture instead of as the site of the Muslim Middle East's first atomic reactor.

ISRAEL: Ultra-Orthodox musical about HDTV? Uh-oh...

Israeli advertising humor takes (ir)reverence one step forward, then two back: The Village People. YMCA. Dancing ultra-Orthodox Jews. What's wrong with this picture? Uh, lots.

Earlier this month, Yes, the Israeli satellite TV company, launched a new feature: HDTV, high definition television. Basically, this is state-of-the-art technology that allows digital production, transmittal and reception at the highest resolution and best quality available and is supposed to be the cat's meow.

But who cares about the technology? What people are really talking about is the TV commercial.

IRAN: Ahmadinejad the blogger

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has something in common with bloggers around the world: being overwhelmed by the demand for fresh content.

The president started a blog in 2006, vowing to spend 15 minutes a day communicating directly with people around the world. He has had 12 posts since then, starting with descriptions of his childhood as the son of a blacksmith who placed 132 out of 400,000 on the university admissions test despite a mid-exam nosebleed.

His protests against the shah did not distract from his studies, he said, and he rose to become a civil engineer, mayor, and in 2005, was elected president. He writes of the nature of bureaucracy, condemns the indignity of the United States' fingerprinting of foreigners, and prints the transcript of the 2006 meeting at the Council of Foreign Relations in New York when a Holocaust survivor presented himself as a living witness to the fact the Holocaust occurred.

The comments section is uncensored and erratic as any blog: "I think you are an evil leader," wrote Xochitl from the US.

"I think we need more leaders like you," wrote Ishu Shujau from the Maldives.

"Keep fighting bro," said Yuli Rani from Indonesia.

"Nice blog. You should be writing more often," said John Walker from Germany.

In an apparent response to Walker's comment, the president made his first post in eight months on Nov. 18th, apologizing for not writing.

"This doesn't mean that I have not been keeping my promise of spending fifteen minutes per week on it," he wrote. "As a matter of fact, I have spent more than the allocated time on the blog."

He had so many messages that he felt like he must personally respond to, he wrote, that only now does he feel caught up. He will continue to post and answer messages.

But he has one request for his loyal correspondents: "Make it as brief as you can."

— Maggie Farley at the United Nations

IRAN: The atomic cafe

Tensions between Iran's conservatives and ultra-conservatives appear to be heating up over the direction of Iran's controversial nuclear program.

On Monday, hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made a fiery speech at a university in Tehran calling his domestic rivals "traitors" and accusing them of pressuring a judge to release former nuclear negotiator Hossein Mousavian from jail despite pending espionage charges.

Meanwhile, Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani, former president and chair of Iran's Assembly of Experts and a challenger to Ahmadinejad's powerful clique, stood by Mousavian at a news conference.

"Criticism is contructive but not nastiness," Rafsanjani said in a veiled criticism of Ahmadinejad's rough manner.

The longstanding fight between Ahmadinejad's circle and that of more pragmatic politicians have heated up in the days before an International Atomic Energy Association report that could tilt the international community for or against another round of United Nations sanctions on Iran.

IRAN: Surf's up, in Tehran

On a recent visit to Iran, I was shocked to discover that one of my favorite blogs — the Huffington Post — was blocked by my Internet service provider.

"The requested page is Forbidden," it said when I tried to log on.

Dejected, I tried to visit another website on the opposite side of the political spectrum, the Drudge Report, only to find that it too was blocked out. My favorite trashy gossip site, TMZ, blocked! Even Wonkette, blocked!

The warning pages include a space where you can submit the names of websites that might have been blocked in error. I've submitted countless websites countless times. But they've never reversed a decision. My favorite sites always remain blocked.

Now, it's easy to understand why the Islamic Republic of Iran wants to filter out pornography websites. Iran, is after all, run by conservative clerics. You can also relate to why they would block the sites of dissident bloggers who wield the Internet as a weapon against the system. The Iranian government, in turn, demands that all Internet service providers filter out a list of websites with adult or anti-establishment content.

But come on! Do they really need to block MySpace? The Seattle Times? The Arizona Republic?

Using one Internet service provider, I found even the Boston Globe's website was blocked . Are the Red Sox really a threat to anyone except the New York Yankees?

I got curious. I started looking for which sites were blocked and which weren't. I found out that it was very arbitrary. Oanda, the website I use for converting currency rates, was blocked while Regime Change Iran, was not.

Creative Iranians find their way around everything. Thanks to a couple friends, I discovered a whole subculture devoted to circumventing the filters. Friends e-mail each other ever-changing proxy addresses that let them access whatever site they want.

The Iranian government filters out the proxies as soon as they find them, but new ones constantly pop up. The demand is just too great, and people are willing to go to great lengths to read and see what they want when they want.

Once in Tehran, I got a phone call from a new Internet service provider. It was a telemarketer. She was offering dial-up Internet rates at a decent price. I was polite, but non-committal. She read my mind, moved in for the kill.

"For a small added fee," she said, "we can get you unfiltered Internet."

— Borzou Daragahi in Beirut

Photo: The Internet can be an exercise in frustration in Iran, especially when your favorite sites for killing time are filtered out. Credit: Borzou Daragahi

LEBANON: Facebook for president!

Lebanese politics are notoriously cumbersome and  convoluted. Today, squabbling politicians yet again delayed a decision on choosing a new president, this time putting it off until Nov. 12. The deadline before the country is hurtled into a constitutional crisis is Nov. 24.

But while they've been slow to pick a president, they've been super quick to take on new fads, especially Facebook, the social networking website which has rapidly taken on a life of its own among the outgoing and chatty Lebanese.

Lebanese have headed to Facebook with an enthusiasm bordering on the extreme. The website's Lebanon network has 125,000 members, about one for every 32 residents of Lebanon. By comparison, Israel has about 90,000 Facebookers, or one for every 67 residents, while gigantic Egypt has 180,000 or one for every 444 residents.

IRAQ: Bringing up baby — online

Everyone knows about Internet chatting and shopping. But have you heard about Web-based-parenting?

Not long ago, you could find me every week in the baby supplies sections of our local Baghdad supermarket, stocking up on milk and diapers for my 3-year-old son, Omar, and 1-year-old daughter, Miriam.

But things have gotten so dangerous here that I decided to send my family out of the country for their safety.

Now, when I go to the supermarket, I still instinctively stop in that section and have to remind myself that my kids are no longer here with me. Every two months, I go to visit them for a week. The day I leave is always the happiest day for me; the day I get back is always the worst.

The only way I have to see my family on a regular basis is through a webcam I set up on my office computer. The first time we did this, Omar kept staring at my image on the screen saying, "Papa? What are you doing in Mom's computer?" Then he would look behind the monitor to see if I was hiding there.

Another day, my wife called over the Internet and said in an exasperated tone, "Papa! Talk to Omar. He won't stop punching Miriam." Then Omar came online saying, "Papa, she punched me first." I told him, "She is your younger sister. You should take care of her, not beat her." So he apologized and kissed her, and I went back to work.

A couple of days ago, Omar asked me on one of these calls, "Papa, why don't you come here?" I told him that I have to work in order to buy him lots of toys. So he said, "Why don't you come here, and I will work instead?" That gave me a shock. I realized that Omar and Miriam are growing up fast, and I am missing their childhood.

— Mohammed Rasheed in Baghdad

ISRAEL: Is Google Earth a threat to security?

Israel’s Yediot Aharonot thinks so. Under the front-page headline “Transparent Country,” the newspaper reported Friday that updates in Google Earth’s online satellite imagery service make it possible for Israel’s enemies to see clearer, sharper pictures of the Jewish state’s air force bases, missile lauch sites and the top-secret nuclear reactor in the Negev Desert.