We carried a story by our favourite New Yorker, Tara Gadomski, this morning about a fistfight that broke out at the burial this week of the Grand Rabbi Moshe Teitelbaum in New York state.
It was just the latest incident in the heated battle for leadership of the Satmar Jews, an ultra-Orthodox and controversial sect of Hasidism, which owns an estimated $500 million worth of New York property.
Different sides of the sect have backed different candidates for the new Grand Rabbi, and the dispute is
Tara had more trouble than she expected when she went to get the story in Brooklyn.
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A number of newspaper websites are starting to provide portal type layouts instead of their standard front pages. You let the newspaper suggest stories you might be interested in, to filter the overwhelming amount of input out there. Increasingly, these portals will be subscription only.
I don't have the power to do that yet. But I can make suggestions of things you might want to listen to from the ´óÏó´«Ã½ World Service output. I'll keep the list short and try to do it weekly.
And since I have just made a programme about faith in Iran to be broadcast this weekend, I'll start with a bit of self-promotion. Reporting Religion special on Shi'ism in Iran can be heard here from Saturday 29th April.
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No one has to sleep on the street in London these days. There are plenty of government run and charitable alternatives to a night on the pavement.
Even so, here in central London around Bush House there are sometimes dozens of rough sleepers.
Often the cans and bottles give some kind of explanation. We may have different ways of dealing with hard times, but I guess many of us can at least imagine why some people choose alcoholic oblivion. The accompanying self-destructiveness is what deters the majority.
But then there are the unexplained street dwellers.
On some mornings over the last couple of weeks, I've noticed this scene outside one of the shops near Bush House when I'm coming in early.
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On the theme of scariness, the Osama bin Laden tape and now the Zarqawi video are apparently the latest efforts to get us to see monsters in the wallpaper.
Walid Phares at Counterterrorism Blog has a of the bin Laden speech that is worth reading, whether you believe it or not.
In particular, Walid Phares lists the specifics in the speech, in what he calls bin Laden's 'marching orders' to his followers:
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Big debate in academic as well as blog circles about the real danger posed by Iran's nuclear programme.
Some analysts, like , are speculating on the way Iran might strike back if attacked by Israel or the US.
Of course, there is no evidence of such a plan, beyond the speculation of retired generals and intelligence officers - and the most strident so far.
But with the 25th anniversary of the Israeli attack on the Iraqi Osirak reactor coming soon, it's no surprise some people are thinking that way.
Even the US condemned the Israeli attack in 1981. Ronald Reagan halted delivery of military aeroplanes Israel had already paid for (for a time, they were delivered eventually).
But now it's hard to find a voice in Washington to say that attack on Saddam Hussein's nuclear programme was wrong.
The scary soundtrack to the Iranian nuclear story is the atmosphere of the Apocalypse set by stories about the history of the new president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. According to in The National Review, he was once a recruiter for the Basiji so it's said - they were the fanatical would-be martyrs who according to reports at the time of the Iran Iraq war in the 1980s sent teenagers to march across minefields to open the way for better trained Iranian forces to attack the Iraqis.
The principle was established by the Ayatollah Khomeini that there was no glory in staying alive in a world where your enemies were victorious. A martyr's death was preferable.
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Contender for most intriguing story amongst all those strong news lines we've been following this week is what's happening in the Solomon Islands.
As we heard from New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark, the involvement of the Taiwanese in the politics of a remote nation of half-a-million people has been part of the reason for the troubles.
Rioters have burned and looted Chinese shops in the capital, Honiara, because, it's alleged, the Taiwanese gave money to the party of Snyder Rini, the new prime minister.
The opposition objected to the influence that money had on the election. Opposition supporters on the mostly Chinese shop owners.
As PM Clark told us, no one wants a failed state in a part of the Pacific that is important strategically, because of its proximity to trade routes, and important for its oil potential.
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There are some places you would not want to be reporting on a crowd intent on overthrowing a king.
Nepal is not one of those places.
You could expect the thousands of people determined that King Gyanendra's grip on power must end to behave with restraint, and even when under fire from the police or army to have the welfare of visitors in mind - even journalists.
Even the guerilla leaders I met in Nepal were polite. I have no illusion about their violent attacks - but they do not see foreigners as the enemy.
We hope our correspondent Charles Haviland and other foreign news reporters benefit from that tradition.
I think we're about to lose a listener.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan told the Washington Post recently that he listens to the ´óÏó´«Ã½ at 5am to get his day going.
Who else could he mean but us?
It'd be nice to think he's grown addicted.
But maybe he'd rather .
I remember reading an article in the Economist over ten years ago speculating on the rise of a new Saladin that could create a revival across the Islamic world.
( isn't it, but it came up in my search and it's interesting anyway)
Now we're talking about a Chinese century instead.
This proves, I suppose, that grand predictions are more parlour game than useful strategic planning.
But it's a fun parlour game.
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There are a few weird things happening with some of the links to and from this blog.
Stick with it, and we'll work them through.
There are now thirty-five million blogs in the world.
No suprise some of them are a bit erratic.
One of my favourite places in the world, Ljubljana the capital of the Alpine nation of Slovenia, has no statues to soldiers.
Poets and writers get the stone monument treatment there.
It's not that the Slovenes don't have wars in their history. The most recent was just fifteen years ago when they fought (briefly) for their independence from Yugoslavia.
It's just they don't go on about it.
Most of us, though, live in countries where statues of fighters are more common.
This weekend, the Irish government is leading celebrations of the Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916, part of the struggle for Irish independence.
Not all Irishmen want to celebrate.
One of our guests today, Kevin Myers of the Irish Times, was uncompromising in his criticism of the glorification of those he called the men of violence behind the Uprising 90 years ago.
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Hands up all those who have complete control of their personal finances.
Really? Do you get out much?
Well, I don't have that perfect control, but being a gadget freak I like to pretend I can achieve it with the help of online banking.
Online I can see where the money is, and in theory take advantage of short term savings accounts by shifting things around.
But there's a flaw.
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The virtual world of is worth much more than the idle whim it might seem to be, said our guest Prof. Edward Castronovo today.
You can play games with friends and family abroad, enhance your self esteem and learn creative skills, all online.
Our favourite New Yorker, Tara Gadomski, took on the personality of 60-yr old Lala to explore the virtual world, and seemed to enjoy herself buying dresses with makebelieve money (Linden dollars) - especially after she met the virtually charming Nick in Second Life Land.
But you don't fool me.
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One of the rules by which we live our broadcasting lives is that if we don't get something on the air, because of time pressures or technical mistakes, then usually we are only ones to suffer.
The reporter who has spent days tracking down a story and whose tape fouls up at the crucial moment, or who has spent hours driving on bad roads to a news location only to discover that their phone can't get a signal and the mobile sounds like its underwater and so can't get on the radio - we in the studio feel for them, but we can find a way of covering the hole in the programme.
Now there is a way to make these things come back from the dead. This is it - the blog.
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| 13:21 UK time, Friday, 28 April 2006
