A Christian martyr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the winner of Iran’s presidential election. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called the election results a “divine miracle,” but fraud and voter irregularities were reportedly rampant; Ahmadinejad’s main opponent, Mir Hossein Mousavi, asked the ayatollah for an investigation into the results. “They didn’t rig the vote,” said an official with Iran’s interior ministry, which conducted the election. “They didn’t even look at the vote. They just wrote the name and put the number in front of it.” Iranians protesting the results took to the streets, where they were attacked with clubs, metal batons, …

An American cattleman. On the 79th anniversary of the stock market crash of 1929, the Dow fell 312.3 points, closing below 8400. Chrysler announced that it would cut 25 percent of its salaried jobs, OPEC said that it was cutting oil production by 1.5 million barrels a day, and former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan declared that financial markets were engulfed in a “once-in-a-century credit tsunami” and admitted that he had “found a flaw” in his free-market ideology. “I don’t know how significant or permanent it is,” he said of his mistake. “But I’ve been very distressed by that fact.”The …

A Christian martyr. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 777 points in one day after the House of Representatives failed to pass a Wall Street bailout plan, first put forth by President George W. Bush, that would have granted Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson up to $700 billion to buy, at any price, toxic mortgage-backed assets from financial firms. “It’s not based on any particular data point,” said a Treasury spokeswoman of the $700 billion figure. “We just wanted to choose a really large number.”Wall Street JournalWashington PostForbes.comSenator John McCain announced that fixing the economy was more important than politicking, suspended …

Radovan Karadzic was arrested in Belgrade and awaits imminent extradition to The Hague, where he will face charges of genocide for his role in the Srebrenica massacres and the siege of Sarajevo. The former Bosnian Serb president, a psychiatrist and poet who in 1991 pledged to drive Bosnian Muslims down “the highway of hell and suffering,” had been living in the Serbian capital as a New Age guru, promoting alternative medicine and “Human Quantum Energy” under the name “Dragan David Dabic.” Serbia hoped the arrest would hasten its campaign to join the European Union, and it was reported that Ratko …

The U.S. Office of Thrift Supervision seized the IndyMac Bank of California, worth an estimated 32 billion dollars, after the bank’s closure in the wake of mortgage industry collapse,AFPand the Bush Administration proposed a rescue package for ailing mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that would allow the Treasury to buy billions of dollars of their stock and lend them billions more to meet their short-term funding needs. The two companies’ total debt is estimated at $1.54 trillion.NYTimesAbu Dhabi bought New York City’sChrysler building for $800 million,GuardianUKand the Belgian brewer InBev planned to buy Anheuser-Busch for nearly $50 billion.AP …

Caught in the Web, 1860. The military junta in Myanmar put the official death toll from last week’s Cyclone Nargis (Urdu for “daffodil”) at 28,458, while foreign observers, taking into account that heavy rains were expected to continue, with malaria, tuberculosis, cholera, typhoid, and dysentery to follow, expected that as many as 100,000 people would die. Before distributing foreign-aid packages, the junta re-labeled them with the names of its generals; a referendum on a new constitution that will perpetuate the junta’s rule was not delayed. “Let’s go cast a vote,” sang two female pop vocalists on state-run television. “With sincere …

Turkey shelled the village of Dashta Takh in Iraqi Kurdistan and declared plans to send its ground troops to attack outposts of the Kurdish separatist PKK in the north of Iraq; criticized for the announcement, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan pointed out that the United States invaded Iraq without anyone�??s permission. Al JazeeraHürriyetAfter the House Foreign Affairs Committee voted for a resolution affirming that a genocide was committed by Ottoman Turks against Armenians during World War I, General Yasar Buyukanit, commander of the Turkish armed forces, said that, should Congress pass the resolution, his country�??s military alliance with the United …

The Cloaca Maxima, 1872 Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, hailed by his countrymen as the “Socrates of the Third Millennium” for “disarming other speakers through his sharp reasoning,” gave a speech on Monday in which he claimed that Iran had no homosexuals and disavowed reports of his nuclear ambitions. “Let me tell a joke here,” Ahmadinejad said. “I think the politicians who are after atomic bombs, or testing them, making them, politically they are backward, retarded.” On Tuesday he met with Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, addressed the United Nations (where he announced that he would disregard any resolutions adopted by the …

Israel, a few days before Yom Kippur, declared that the Gaza Strip is now a “hostile entity,” and the office of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert (who is under investigation for corruption) announced a collective-punishment plan that includes “limiting the transfer of goods to the Gaza Strip, cutting back fuel and electricity, and restricting the movement of people to and from the Strip.” Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum condemned Israel’s “criminal, terrorist Zionist actions.”BBC NewsBBC NewsABC NewsU.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who recently was denied an audience with the Pope, went to Jerusalem to bring peace,BBC Newsand it was reported that …

Caught in the Web, 1860. A White House report showed that only eight of eighteen benchmarks for progress were being met in Iraq, but President Bush asked Congress to wait for another report in September before passing judgment.NYTNYTRyan C. Crocker, U.S. ambassador to Iraq, pleaded against withdrawal. “In the States,” said Crocker, “it’s like we’re in the last half of the third reel of a three-reel movie, and all we have to do is decide we�??re done here, and the credits come up, and the lights come on, and we leave the theater and go on to something else. Whereas …

At least 150 Iraqis were killed by a truck bomb in northern Iraq in possibly the deadliest bombing since the United States invaded in 2003, and it was reported that, despite a police security drive, the number of unidentified bodies found in Baghdad had increased sharply in June. New York TimesBBCnews.comAustralia’s defense minister, Brendan Nelson, admitted that securing oil is one of the reasons Australian troops stay in Iraq. “This government,” said Labor leader Kevin Rudd, “simply makes it up as it goes along.”BBCnews.comThe White House rejected demands to hand over documents related to the firings of eight U.S. attorneys …

The Republican candidates for the presidency debated at the Ronald Reagan Library in California. Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas said that the day Roe v. Wade was repealed would be “a glorious day of human liberty and freedom” and that the current tax system “ought to be taken behind a barn and killed with a dull ax”; Senator John McCain of Arizona claimed that he would “follow [Osama bin Laden] to the gates of hell”; TexasCongressman Ron Paul said that not going to war in Iraq would have been “conservative,” because “it�??s a Republican, it�??s a pro-American, it follows the …

An American cattleman. The United StatesSupreme Court ruled in a 5 to 4 decision that the 2003 Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act is legal.Washington PostAttorney General Alberto Gonzales testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding the firing of federal prosecutors; Senator Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.) told Gonzales his ability to lead was in question, and Senator Tom Coburn (R., Okla.) asked Gonzales to resign. One prominent Republican said the hearing was like “clubbing a baby seal.”New York TimesRaw StoryA series of attacks in Shiite districts of Baghdad killed at least 158 people, the largest number of people killed in a …