Iranian newspapers say a court has sentenced a man who blinded a woman with acid also to be blinded with acid under the country's Islamic law.

Thursday's reports in several newspapers, including the Kargozaran, say 27-year-old Majid confessed to attacking Ameneh Bahrami in 2004 to dissuade anyone from marrying the woman he loved.

Wednesday's ruling was issued based on the Islamic law system of ''qisas,'' or eye for an eye retribution.

Some Hostages Free After Indian Attacks

Bush Calls Singh to Offer Support, Condolences

Round-the-clock meetings were under way as the rumpled and tired representatives of the Shiite-majority government met at the home of President Jalal Talabani with equally exhausted-looking senior Sunni lawmakers. Mr. Talabani is a Kurd.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Wednesday that she expected a quick resolution to a wide-ranging House investigation into ethical questions surrounding Representative Charles B. Rangel, the powerful Democrat from New York.

Mr. Rangel, who is 78, has attempted to defuse the criticism by calling on the House ethics committee to review his various dealings and by assuring the public that he had “done nothing morally wrong.”

A new insight into the reason for aging has been gained by scientists trying to understand how resveratrol, a minor ingredient of red wine, improves the health and lifespan of laboratory mice. They believe that the integrity of chromosomes is compromised as people age, and that resveratrol works by activating a protein known as sirtuin that restores the chromosomes to health.  ...

Sirtris, a company Dr. Sinclair helped found, has developed a number of chemicals that mimic resveratrol and are potentially more suitable as drugs since they activate sirtuin at much lower doses than resveratrol. This month, one of these chemicals was reported in the journal Cell Metabolism to protect mice on fatty diets from getting obese and to enhance their endurance in treadmills, just as resveratrol does.

Though the sirtuin field holds considerable promise, the dust has far from settled. Resveratrol is a powerful agent with many different effects, only some of which are exerted through sirtuin. So drugs that activate sirtuin may not be as splendid a tonic for people as resveratrol certainly seems to be for mice.

And David's lips are lockt; but in divine

High-piping Péhleví, with "Wine!  Wine!  Wine!

     Red Wine!" -- the Nightingale cries to the Rose

That sallow Cheek of hers to incarnadine.

 

Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring

The Winter Garment of Repentance fling:

     The Bird of Time has but a little way

To fly--and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing.

 

--Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (First Edition of the Translation by Edward Fitzgerald)

Volcker, as chairman of Obama's new Economic Recovery Advisory Board, will join New York Federal Reserve Bank President Timothy F. Geithner, who will lead the Treasury Department, and former Treasury secretary Lawrence H. Summers, who will run the White House's National Economic Council. The appointment of Volcker, who led the fight to rejuvenate the U.S. economy after the stagflation of the 1970s, is part of Obama's effort to seek "the best minds in America" to deal with the current crisis, as the president-elect put it this week.

Obama's tendency to surround himself with well-credentialed people accustomed to being in charge will also test his crisis-management skills, according to economists, historians and former White House officials. Obama, they say, must make sure that his surplus of smarts does not become too much of a good thing, as advisers leading agencies with overlapping mandates battle for the president's ear and for influence over policy.

"You wouldn't want to gather anything less than the best people you can find, even though stars have egos that are somewhat outsized and those egos might make it difficult to work together," said Peter J. Wallison, a Reagan White House counsel and now a director at the American Enterprise Institute.

But he said Obama must create clear lines of authority to avoid rattling the financial markets. "This is a management problem, and I hope Obama, who has never had an executive position, understands the confusion that will occur unless he designates a specific spokesperson," he said. "I've been in too many administrations and seen how things can get out of control."

She is immaculately dressed, as always, wearing a gold necklace and a tailored suit in the fashionable color known as aubergine. And she is relaxed, which is a change from her usual demeanor, as the week bends toward Thanksgiving and her thoughts turn to life after Jan. 20.

Condoleezza Rice may be the most disciplined person in this town of workaholics. She has always been the perfect young woman, pleasing and impressing others. Her mother, Angelena, advised her, "Always remember, if you're overdressed, it reflects badly on [other people]; if you're underdressed, it reflects badly on you," according to a 2001 interview conducted by The Post's Dale Russakoff. And she has lived by that rule -- operating with the steely control that she learned as an ice skater and pianist.

But in a few weeks, Rice will have only herself to please, and that has had a liberating effect. She talks about her past and future as a person with nothing left to prove. She's leaving Washington for real after Inauguration Day and will return to Stanford University. If "Meet the Press" calls, she won't be in. "I have no desire to be shadow secretary of state," she told me.  ...

Rice seems to take genuine pleasure in the arrival of Barack Obama as the first African American president. She was asleep at 11 on election night when his victory was declared -- yes, she is that disciplined. But she says of his election: "It is the strongest affirmation to date that America is what it says it is. And it's a reminder that America had to overcome a lot to get there."

Update on Iran: The Bush administration once planned to announce the opening of an interests section in Tehran this month. That won't happen now, and the story illustrates the broken connection that is the U.S.-Iranian relationship.

An announcement set for September was delayed because of the Russian invasion of Georgia. But the proposal was back on track until a few weeks ago, when the administration became concerned about Iranian interference in negotiations with Iraq over a status-of-forces agreement. It seemed the wrong time for an opening to Tehran that Sunni Arab allies warned would be seen as a concession.

The Iraqi Parliament on Thursday approved a security pact that charts the way for the U.S. military to end its presence in Iraq eight years after the invasion by a U.S.-led coalition led to the fall of Saddam Hussein.

In a landmark vote, Iraq lawmakers backed the so-called Status of Forces Agreement that requires U.S. troops to pull out of cities and towns next summer and from all of Iraq by the end of 2011.

As lawmakers read out the agreement in parliament, loyalists of Shiite cleric Moqtada al Sadr banged folders on tables and waved placards that read: "No, No Agreement."  ...

Sadr has long opposed the presence of U.S. troops. In recent months, his followers have staged demonstrations against the security pact; he has vowed to launch attacks on U.S. troops if the agreement is approved.

I've lost money (not that I had that much in the first place), but I haven't been wiped out the way some people have. I don't have an adjustable-rate mortgage or a house that's "underwater." My employer is still in business.

I do have to learn to live with the new economic reality, though. I now know that there's no law of economics that says real estate prices must always rise. I know that a house doesn't make a very reliable bank, that "credit" isn't an infinite pot of cheap money and that having a little money in a savings account is better than Ambien for inducing a good night's sleep.

The social transformation that has already begun is in many ways more definitive and profound than anything in the political or economic spheres. A conservative opinion-maker told me recently that she really, truly, with all her heart wanted John McCain to win -- and then, when Obama and his family appeared on election night, "it all just went away." It wasn't that she forswore her candidate or her conservative philosophy -- soon she'll be writing elegant eviscerations of the new president's policies. But she understood the epochal significance of the election of the first African American president, and she was deeply moved.

Despite his looming trial on federal bribery charges, Louisiana Democratic Rep. William J. Jefferson hasn't had any trouble raising money from his allies in Congress.

Since his June 2007 indictment, Mr. Jefferson has raised more than a quarter-million dollars in political donations to retain the House seat he's held since 1990.

The money includes tens of thousands of dollars from political action committees controlled by other members of Congress. He's also gotten help from labor union PACs.

Are all the fanatics in the Democratic Party going to be able to get a hearing with this president? He is going to have to maintain both feet on the ground in the months ahead. The delusional malcontents that a Democratic presidential candidate courts in an election can cause a Democratic administration grave problems.

Now that brings to mind the visuals that the President-elect is using when he addresses the American people. He appears enhaloed by American flags, not one or two but a whole ring of flags. Moreover, he speaks from a lectern proclaiming "Office of the President-Elect." In point of fact, there is no Office of the President-Elect, and Mr. Obama is not even in an office. He is on a stage. Arguably, a stage has been his office during much of his public life, given the fact that he is America's first motivational speaker to become president.

Paul McCartney famously remarked to his soon-to-be nemesis Allen Klein, “If you are screwing us, I don’t see how.”  Conservatives may have the same feeling about Barack Obama’s appointments, which have been notable for their Establishment, centrist bent after a campaign of Leftist populism.  The latest headscratcher comes at the Office of Management and Budget in the selection of Peter Orszag, who got praise from conservative stalwart Rob Portman, one of his predecessors...  ...

Thus far, given the lack of change at Defense, the inclusion of so many Clinton-era officials in his incoming administration, a Scowcroftian foreign policy, and a Greenspan-admiring economic team, it’s hard to see how Obama is screwing us.

In fact, the only ones who got screwed thus far were the far-Left groups that bought into the Hope and Change populism and thought Obama would start a new Golden Age of Progressivism. 

Past attacks in Indian cities and in other parts of the world may have had higher death tolls, but they failed to achieve the results of Mumbai. The city has been completely shut down for two days, while the Hindustan Times said the country is gripped by a "fear psychosis." India's government has long treated the terrorist problem as a secondary issue. This will change. The mode of attack--assault teams launched into the heart of a major city--is already sending chills down the spines of security officials and governments throughout the world.

As someone who was skeptical of Obama’s moderate posturing during the campaign, I have to admit that I am gobsmacked by these appointments , most of which could just as easily have come from a President McCain. (Jim Jones is an old friend of McCain’s, and McCain almost certainly would have asked Gates to stay on as well.) This all but puts an end to the 16-month timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, the unconditional summits with dictators, and other foolishness that once emanated from the Obama campaign. His appointments suggest that, if anything, his administration will have a Reapolitiker, rather than a liberal, bent, although Clinton and Steinberg at State should be powerful voices for “neo-liberalism” which is not so different in many respects from “neo-conservativism”. Both, for instance, support humanitarian interventions in places like Darfur and Bosnia.

Combined with the moderation of the economic team that Obama has just named, I would say his administration already far exceeds expectations, and he hasn’t even taken office yet.  ...

Only churlish partisans of both the left and the right can be unhappy with the emerging tenor of our nation’s new leadership.

Tempered not melted. The question is not whether America is in decline, but whether it is in decline at a more rapid pace than true of Europe, Russia, or Asia. And one bright spot in the otherwise dark economic news will be the resilience of the United States. Forget trillions of this, and billions of that, or our sinking GDP and GNP, or deflation and unemployment rates, or all the other data—at least for a moment. Instead consider the gargantuan mess that Europe is in with its even wilder real estate market, greater deficits, and far larger banking losses from bad loans abroad. Russia is a mess; with less than $50 a barrel oil, it will be worse than a mess. Export-driven China may have trillions of US dollars in reserves, but it has tens of trillions in infrastructure investments to make before it can match US roads, dams, and airports, much less approximate our standard of living. Americans are far more meritocratic than others, success far less predicated on birth, accent, parentage, or class. We are more optimistic, and do best when pressed (Consider a broke America in 1939, and a rich America in 1946 that defeated the Axis and sent billions to its allies in the UK and Russia.). Our demography is far more encouraging than Europe’s. We react to crises far more energetically; compare US troops in Afghanistan to their NATO counterparts; or ask who adapted more successfully in Iraq—the US Marines far from home, or Al Qaeda terrorists in their own backyard? Once the dust settles on this crisis, I wager the United States will be relatively stronger after than before the meltdown. One can do almost anything with a $13 trillion economy, a two-percent-plus growing population, and a stable political system; much harder with a shrinking work force that breaks apart along class lines and resentments. Even while pundits write weekly books about the ‘end’ of the United States, or at least ‘American decline,’ the United States will emerge relatively stronger for the ordeal.

Turning on a dime. There is such a thing as divine Nemesis, even though the god seems to sleep for long periods. The media violated all the classical cannons of fairness and objectivity in this presidential campaign. Now they are in a dilemma, since most of their long-voiced objections about Bush won’t be operative any more—on matters of taxes, Guantánamo, the bail-outs, FISA, the Patriot Act, Iraq, guns, abortion, capital punishment—inasmuch as Obama suddenly won’t be hoping and changing much of anything, but often leaving things on these issues as they are, while turning management over to the tentacles of the Clinton octopus. The media, in Animal Farm fashion, will have to do a ‘that was then, this is now’ turnabout, as they dream of reasons why Gitmo is not that bad, or why keeping the Bush tax cuts for a bit will stimulate the economy, or why wiretapping on suspected terrorists, on reflection, isn’t really that subversive. And as they reinvent the once evil administration policies, and the formerly Hillary hacks into inspired Obama ideas and experienced and professional Obama appointments, few will believe them. Done, over with—the media has lost credibility and will have to start over from square one. And all that was a much needed development. (PS—after the India nightmare, note the Obama reaction to dismantling the FISA accords, Patriot Act, Guantánamo, and withdrawing from Iraq, as the campaign rhetoric of Bush shredding the Constitution morphs into something like ‘the public will turn on a dime and blame us for criminal laxity if anything like 9/11 happens on our watch.’)

What happened to Iraq? Lost? Quagmire? Out by March 2008 which was the promise Obama gave when he announced his run in February 2007? General Betray Us? Somehow between Gen. Petraeus’s 2007 congressional testimony (Cf. Hillary’s “suspension of disbelief” slur) and the present calm, the US military essentially won the war. All the front-page stories in our papers that Americans in Iraq were incompetent, barbaric, mercenary, and Hitlerian suddenly ceased, and in their absence there was—nothing? About five times as many Chicagoans died violently in October than did US soldiers in combat in Iraq.  ...

For all the tragedy and mayhem, the thought that Saddam Hussein is gone and just five years later there is a stable and successful constitutional government in the heart of the ancient caliphate seems as surreal as it is encouraging.

"Abdullah Massoud ... had earned both sympathy and reverence for his time in Guantanamo Bay. ... Upon his release, he made it home to Waziristan and resumed his war against the U.S. With his long hair, his prosthetic limb and impassioned speeches, he quickly became a charismatic inspiration to Waziristan's youth." -- The New York Times

"He lost his leg in a landmine explosion a few days before the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in September 1996. It didn't dampen his enthusiasm as a fighter and he got himself an artificial leg later, says Yusufzai." (The Indo-Asian News Service)

"The 29-year-old Massoud, who lost his left leg in a landmine explosion while fighting alongside the Taliban, often used to ride a horse or camel because his disability made it painful for him to walk long distances in hilly areas." -- BBC Monitoring South Asia

"He was educated in Peshawar and was treated in Karachi after his left leg was blown up in a landmine explosion in the Wreshmin Tangi gorge near Kabul in September 1996. He now walks with an artificial leg specifically made for him in Karachi." -- Gulf News (United Arab Emirates)

After being captured fighting with Taliban forces against Americans in 2001, Abdullah Massoud was sent to Guantanamo, where the one-legged terrorist was fitted with a special prosthetic leg, at a cost of $50,000-$75,000 to the U.S. taxpayer. Under the Americans With Disabilities Act, Massoud would now be able to park his car bomb in a handicapped parking space!