It has become an extraordinary day, at the end of what has been an extraordinary election campaign.
As soon as polls opened in Iran, it became clear that the enthusiasm of the last few days has been translated into what is likely to be a huge turnout.
There were queues snaking round the block from many polling stations.
The crowds gathered outside, in segregated lines of men and women. Even as they waited to vote, they continued the spontaneous debate that has been sweeping Iran in the last week.
At one polling station I visited, some voters came up to me, nervous that the government might be trying to rig the election.
They were worried that a bus being used as a mobile polling station was not as well monitored as the main polling centre.
Other voters say the system under which a reference number has to be written by the candidates' name on the ballot paper is confusing.
Good humour
Much of the mobile phone text message system seems not to be working, a system the opposition had been hoping to use to send back reports from their monitors at polling stations and election counts.
The opposition has complained to the government.
Rumours are sweeping Tehran that some satellite TV stations may have been blocked.
But for the most part election day has continued the good humour of recent days.
One supporter of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a woman in the long black religious chador, made a point of shaking hands with another woman wearing the green colours of the opposition contender, Mir-Hossein Mousavi.
Many of the polling stations are in mosques or other religious buildings.
At the Hosseiniyat Ershad in north Tehran, the number of women, particularly young women, queuing to vote is most striking.
The young voters who have been turning out in force for Mr Mousavi say they want more personal freedom, more opportunities and better relations with the West.
Extended voting
Supporters of Mr Ahmadinejad have praised him for pushing forward the nuclear programme, and say he has earned more respect for Iran internationally.
By mid-morning, the interior ministry announced that already five million people had voted. Voting was extended by at least four hours.
Such a high turnout will make Iranians more confident of the outcome.
They will remember the election in 1997, in which President Khatami defeated a candidate heavily favoured by the establishment.
His victory was so overwhelming it soon became clear that it could not be overturned, even if there had been those trying to do so.
Results are expected to begin coming in during the night. Almost every Iranian you meet is eager for any idea about what is going to happen.
What comes next in the flu fight?
on Thursday, June 11, 2009
Nurse taking swab test
Health protection officials are still trying to contain flu in the UK
The headlines have been impossible to miss - swine flu has reached pandemic proportions.
But once the dust settles on the World Health Organization announcement, what will it actually mean?
Technically a pandemic is when community-wide human-to-human transmission is being seen in two regions of the world.
But that does not mean the world is going to see the spread of the disease on the scale of the 1918 Spanish Flu which claimed the lives of 50m people.
In many respects, phase six - as the pandemic stage is classed by the WHO - is just a label.
Struggle
What really matters is what individual countries are doing on the ground to tackle the disease - and that is not dictated by WHO but determined by national governments.
The announcement will not make any difference to the developing countries across the world that are struggling to implement their plans because of the lack of resources.
And in Australia, the country that tipped the balance from phase five to six, the fight continues along the same lines as it has in recent weeks.
WHO PANDEMIC ALERT PHASES
Flu viruses in different species
Phase 1: No infections in humans are being caused by viruses circulating in animals.
Flu virus mutation
Phase 2: Animal flu virus causes infection in humans, and is a potential pandemic threat.
Antigenic shift in pigs
Phase 3: Flu causes sporadic cases in people, but no significant human-to-human transmission.
Virus transmission to humans
Phase 4: Human-to-human transmission and community-level outbreaks.
Virus transmission to humans
Phase 5: Human-to-human transmission in at least two countries. Strong signal pandemic imminent.
Virus transmission to humans
Phase 6: Virus spreads to another country in a different region. Global pandemic under way.
Virus transmission to humans
Post-peak: Pandemic activity appears to be decreasing though second wave possible.
Post-pandemic: activity returns to normal, seasonal flu levels.
BACK {current} of {total} NEXT
Nor does the announcement alter the approach the UK is taking in its battle to contain the virus, which has infected more than 700 so far.
"It is irrelevant," says Professor Steve Field, president of the Royal College of GPs, which worked with the government to develop the flu contingency plans.
"What really matters is what is happening in places like Birmingham where flu has spread.
"The approach being taken here has been about containing the disease.
"It is largely working so far, but things can change very quickly."
Alert
The UK has four levels of alert for a pandemic with the current situation most closely resembling level three, defined as "outbreaks within the UK".
However, what is more important is what experts are calling the shift away from containment.
Ever since outbreaks started to be seen in the UK, health protection officials have been following a fairly standard protocol of giving anti-virals, isolating cases and tracing their contacts.
UK ALERT LEVELS
One - Virus only seen outside the UK
Two - Virus isolated in the UK
Three - Outbreaks in the UK
Four - Widespread activity across the UK
This has also led to the closure of several schools.
But if the UK problem reaches what is called the mitigation stage - whereby the disease is spreading but there are still no vaccine to protect people - then a different approach is required.
This could involve everything from placing restrictions on public gatherings, such as football matches and concerts, to limiting the use of drugs.
In practice, this would mean giving drugs only to those who have got the disease rather than as a preventative measure to people they have come into contact with.
The flu plans also contain contingencies to stop routine NHS operations to allow hospitals to cope with a flood of flu patients.
The government's emergency planning group Cobra has already discussed such steps, but it is by no means a foregone conclusion that they will be enacted in the immediate future.
Instead, the government is remaining tight-lipped over future developments.
There is concern that the virus might mutate in the southern hemisphere over its winter and become more virulent, but there's no sign of that yet
Fergus Walsh
BBC's medical correspondent
Read Fergus's thoughts in full
Global view
The Department of Health says: "The WHO alert levels reflect the global view, and any action taken in the UK will be based on the situation here.
"We are monitoring the situation constantly and if anything changes we will react accordingly."
Professor Paul Hunter, a health protection expert at the University of East Anglia, says if anything the political consequences of the first pandemic in more than 40 years will be greater than any operational shift.
"There will be debates in Parliament, people will get worried and we will have to see how businesses and politicians react.
"There is a risk that there will be panic and calls for travel restrictions and the like.
"So far the government has got the reaction right in my view.
"And while it is worrying we are still seeing cases despite it being summer when flu generally does not spread, we can still be reassured that it is a relatively mild disease."
Indeed, that in many ways is the key.
The word pandemic sounds serious, but it just refers to its geographical spread not how virulent it is.
While the disease has spread to more than 70 countries, infecting nearly 30,000 people in the process, the death toll at 140 has been relatively small.
Indonesia tests ties with 'arrogant' neighbor
on Monday, June 8, 2009
The friendship between the two Southeast Asian Muslim neighbors has been strained in recent weeks over a disputed island off Indonesia's Kalimantan province.
Both Malaysia and Indonesia are claiming ownership of the Ambalat island off northern Kalimantan and its seabed, which is believed to possess large quantities of petroleum and gas deposits. The dispute over the island flared up on February 16 when Malaysian state-owned oil company Petronas granted an oil exploration concession to the giant British-Dutch multinational Shell petroleum company.
Since then, both countries have disputed each other's claim to the area and sent gunboats to protect their interests. Indonesia's Department of Transportation has also sent workers to build a lighthouse on Unarang Reef just off the island. Jakarta claims the Malaysian navy arrested and assaulted these workers before releasing them.
While the Malaysian media has been mute on the issue, here in Indonesia the media has drummed up nationalist sentiments over the issue, which has been taken up by political and youth groups raising the specter of the Sukarno era "Smash Malaysia" campaign of 1963.
While young people across the country have been enlisted as konfrontasi volunteers, some demonstrators have burned the Malaysian flag. Yet, leaders of both countries have appealed for refrain and vowed to settle the dispute by peaceful means.
During a visit to Jakarta last week to meet his Indonesian counterpart to discuss the contentious issue, Malaysia's amicable foreign minister, Syed Hamid Albar, gave a series of media interviews to calm the waters and appealed to the Indonesian media to tone down its anti-Malaysian rhetoric.
When asked by the popular Tempo magazine whether Malaysia was ready for war, Albar asked "what war?" He went on to assure Indonesia that war has never been an option considered by Malaysia.
"Those who talk about war are the Indonesian media," he said. "Indonesian television talks about attacking Malaysia. I think they should tone it down."
Confrontation between two countries that share a common religion, language and cultural traditions may sound somewhat out of place in the modern world. But, many analysts here argue that the latest confrontation is much more than just a dispute over territory.
They point out that this comes hard on the heels of Malaysia's high-handed arrest and deportation of thousands of illegal Indonesian workers; while on the other hand, the Indonesian media has whipped up the Ambalat issue immediately after a controversial fuel-price hike by the government of newly elected President Susilo Bamabang Yudhoyono.
"The Ambalat case has at least demonstrated how the spirit of nationalism has 'pushed back' waves of protests against the increase in fuel prices," observed political science lecturer Israr Iskandar of Andalas University in Padang.
Writing in the Jakarta Post this week, he warned that while the Ambalat case has indicated that nationalism is still strong in Indonesia, it runs the danger of burying beneath it the real people's issues, especially cost of living.
But media analyst Wahyutama of the Jakarta-based media watchdog Habibie Center argues that the treatment of Indonesian migrant workers in Malaysia may well be the trigger for the current nationalist sentiments here.
On March 1, Malaysia began rounding up and arresting undocumented workers - most of whom are Indonesians - following the end of a four-month amnesty. Those arrested could face heavy fines, jail sentences and whipping.
"We cannot just simplify Indonesia's reaction to Malaysia as a result of media exposure to the Ambalat issue. The reaction is the accumulated emotions of the Indonesian people toward Malaysia-Indonesia relations, especially regarding Indonesian workers," Wahyutama told Inter Press Service in an interview. "I believe the emotions are addressed to the Malaysian government and not to the people.
"There is a general feeling among Indonesian people of being humiliated and dishonored by Malaysia," Wahyutama noted. "The Ambalat conflict happened in a sequence with the sweep of Indonesian illegal workers from Malaysia," he added.
"This policy is viewed by Indonesian people with disgust. It shows Malaysia has no respect for the Indonesian people - especially the cruel punishment like whipping meted out by the Malaysian government to Indonesians."
Malaysia's decision to award a concession for oil exploitation and management in the Ambalat area to Shell indicated that Kuala Lumpur is sure the island is part of its territory. Indonesia, however, is also confident that the area is in its maritime territory. Jakarta says its claim to the area is supported by historical facts that Ambalat previously was part of the Bulungan Sultanate that since Indonesia's independence in 1945 has been incorporated into the Indonesian archipelago.
The latest clash between the two neighbors is related to the dispute over the Sipadan and Ligitan islands in the same Sulawesi Sea - a dispute that was settled in Malaysia's favor by the International Court of Justice in 2002. Malaysia's claim over Ambalat and the Unarang Reef is based on the 2002 judgement.
But because there is an overlapping territory, Indonesia has used the rules of the Convention of Law of the Sea to lay claim to portions of the island, situated off the land border between East Kalimantan and Malaysia's state of Sabah.
Analysts believe that Indonesia will not go into international arbitration on this issue because the 2002 case was very costly, especially the pay for foreign lawyers. Malaysia too is not in a mood for a legal battle, something Foreign Minister Albar indicated during his visit here last week.
The two countries are due to meet again next week to hammer out a possible joint oil exploration deal in a bid to diffuse tension
At least 10 people have been shot dead by suspected militants in a mosque in southern Thailand, police say.
Five gunmen carrying assault rifles entered the mosque during evening prayers in the Cho-ai-rong district of troubled Narathiwat province.
The local imam was among the dead, the AFP news agency quoted a police official as saying.
More than 3,700 people have died during a five-year insurgency in southern Thailand's mainly Muslim provinces.
"They opened fire indiscriminately at about 50 worshippers inside the mosque," a police official said to AFP on condition of anonymity.
He said up to five gunmen entered the mosque through the back door, although an army spokesman was quoted as saying there were two attackers who entered the building from separate entrances.
It is not yet clear who carried out these attacks.
Previous attacks in the region, which borders Malaysia, have been blamed on Muslim insurgents.
But they tend to target people perceived to be collaborating with the Bangkok government, or to try to force Buddhist residents from the area and establish an Islamic state.
Thailand annexed the three southern provinces - Narathiwat, Yala and Pattani - in 1902, but the vast majority of people there are Muslim and speak a Malay dialect, in contrast to the Buddhist Thai speakers in the rest of the country.
The tortuous search for Air France crash clues
on Saturday, June 6, 2009
Brazilian air force searches for Air France jet
The region where the plane went missing is notorious for storms
For French air accident investigators, trying to extract meaning from the shreds of information about the last minutes of Flight AF 447 must be excruciating.
They have neither the flight data recorder nor the cockpit voice recorder. Both are thousands of metres below the surface of the Atlantic.
Instead they have a series of messages sent out over a satellite network called ACARS.
It is a system not designed for crash investigation but for airline engineers to monitor developing faults on planes, and even problems like over-flowing toilets or on-board sickness.
Nevertheless, the messages have told the investigators that speed sensors on the aircraft were out of kilter with each other.
The Airbus information circular says "there was an inconsistency between the different measured airspeeds", and goes on to advise operators of the company's various aircraft what to do in a similar situation - including using other technologies, such as GPS, to monitor the plane's speed.
Messages leaked
The ACARS messages themselves have not been released but an unverified list has been leaked. The BBC cannot vouch for its accuracy.
What is clear is that the crew, who should have been able to see some of these warnings on their cockpit displays, would have been assailed by demands for action from the aircraft's systems
Among the list is one line: "Nav ADR disagree".
This suggests a possible problem with the plane's Air Data Reference (ADR) systems, which use air pressure sensors to measure the plane's speed.
If one ADR disagrees with the others, this fault message can be generated.
In previous crashes the sensors, or pitots, have got iced up in severe weather, despite being electrically heated.
Yet at high altitude, the plane's safe speed margins are narrower. Push the limits, and pilots can end up flying in what they call "coffin corner".
Other messages seem to show a string of systems either failing or giving warnings of failure.
Over the course of a few minutes, the autopilot switched off. The plane seems to have begun flying in what is called an "alternate flight law".
Fly-by-wire aircraft like the Airbus A330 actively "protect" pilots and passengers by preventing large or unstable manoeuvres, such as turning too hard.
It is possible, in an alternate flight law, for some of that protection to be lost. It may be the plane was no longer being prevented from suffering damage from turbulence, high speed or rapid changes of pitch.
But investigations always have a fundamental problem when analysing this sort of information.
Was one of these faults the cause of the crash, or the effect of whatever caused it?
Emergency checklists
What is clear is that the crew, who should have been able to see some of these warnings on their cockpit displays, would have been assailed by demands for action from the aircraft's systems.
Any fault requires the pilots to consult emergency checklists to try to diagnose what has gone wrong, and then take quick decisions to recover the situation.
It is possible that within a few minutes the plane, in severe turbulence, was losing height and out of control, with the crew battling to deal with multiple failures.
But the biggest mystery is why the aircraft seems to have ended up flying through what meteorologists believe were storm cloud formations towering more than 15,200m into the air.
The volatile Intertropical Convergence Zone along the equator is navigated safely by hundreds of aircraft every day.
They have a weather radar showing the locations of storms and Lufthansa has described how one of its crews, in the area at the time, steered a course through the turbulent skies without any problems.
None of the fault messages leaked so far have suggested the radar system itself failed.
But without the aircraft's recorders, investigators are working with one hand tied behind their backs, while the world waits for answers.
How Tiananmen shook Europe
on Friday, June 5, 2009
How Tiananmen shook Europe
Twenty years ago, the collapse of communism in Europe was proceeding smoothly. Tiananmen Square threw this into confusion, writes BBC Diplomatic Editor Brian Hanrahan.
Although it wasn't obvious, the Kremlin had given the nod to reformers in Eastern Europe and privately reassured them there would be no Soviet intervention to support the hardliners.
Poland and Hungary had already embarked on the path that would see them transferring peacefully from communist rule.
As tanks were rolling into Tiananmen square, Poland was voting the communists out of power. Hungary continued to roll up the barbed wire of the Iron Curtain.
Mikhail Gorbachev in China
Just as reformers elsewhere in Eastern Europe were starting to take notice - and take heart - events in China threw everything into confusion.
For the old-guard communists, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was fast becoming the man you didn't want to come to dinner for fear of the trouble that a visit from him might provoke.
And so it proved in China. The democracy movement was already campaigning against the government, but it was a state visit by Mr Gorbachev in May that emboldened its members to take over Tiananmen Square.
There, encamped between the portrait of Chairman Mao hanging on the walls of the Forbidden City, and the Great Hall of the People, they were a highly visible symbol of dissent right at the heart of China.
Night in the square
It couldn't have come at a worse time for the Chinese leadership.
Beijing was full of journalists waiting for Mr Gorbachev to arrive. I was part of a BBC contingent there in strength for a visit that was expected to be of unusual historic importance - an opportunity to establish a more balanced relationship between these two communist giants after years of antagonism and tensions.
Instead our focus switched to this unprecedented display of political opposition.
I rushed down to the square to view with astonishment the crowds of young people who marched in and camped there.
Moving in formed columns - waving black banners embossed with gold calligraphy - they looked like the vanguard of an approaching army. And so they proved to be. From a few tens of thousands on that first day they grew over the weeks that followed to a million strong.
I spent the night with them in the square fully expecting the Chinese police would move in and disperse them during darkness. That was the Chinese way.
Instead we were still there at dawn when a pink sky showed tiny figures peering down at us from the top of the Great Hall of the People. The Politburo had come to see for themselves before deciding what to do.
It was the beginning of a power struggle about how to treat the protestors. The Communist Party general secretary, Zhao Ziyang, wanted to address their grievances. But the old guard leaders would not tolerate anything which challenged the authority of the communist party.
They prepared to put down the demonstrations by force. Zhao was removed from his position and placed under house arrest until he died in 2005. Only in the last few weeks has his account of events emerged. (Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyang.)
There are striking parallels between what was happened in China and Eastern Europe.
The demonstrators had sympathisers inside the communist hierarchy who were willing to negotiate about their grievances.
The willingness of the army to shoot down protestors was in doubt.
There was unusual media coverage - in Europe it was a deliberate policy encouraged by Mr Gorbachev's reforms - in China it was an accidental opening created by Mr Gorbachev's visit.
I remember watching one banner being carried into Tiananmen Square congratulating the BBC on its coverage - evidence of how international coverage was influencing debate in China.
Political paralysis
Without their habitual control of the media, communist leaderships hesitated to take tough action for fear of the damage it would do both internationally and at home. It's an illuminating demonstration of how important propaganda was to maintaining communism.
In both Europe and China the mood of euphoria on the streets was matched by political paralysis. But they were to play out very differently.
In China the elders of the party, under Deng Xiaoping's leadership, decided to reassert traditional communist control. They replaced supporters of the protestors, indoctrinated sections of the army to ensure their loyalty, and closed down as much of the international media coverage as they could before taking action.
Then they rode out the firestorm of international protest, despite the long-lasting damage it did to China's image and its economy.
This option wasn't available to Eastern European leaders. They had neither the economic nor military weight to stifle reform in the same brutal fashion. And as long as Mr Gorbachev remained in control of the Soviet Union, they could expect no political support from there.
But China's actions served to hearten those who opposed reform in Eastern Europe. It was reminder of how previous political challenges had been militarily suppressed in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Poland.
And that autumn I found civic groups in East Germany were being threatened with the "Tiananmen Option" if they continued to bring people on to the streets.
It was a chilling but ineffectual threat so long as Mr Gorbachev ruled. But his fall from power two years later demonstrated what a narrow window of opportunity there had been for Eastern Europeans to break free from Soviet domination.
What was now plainly on view were two different approaches to reform. The Gorbachev way was to cede political power and be prepared to see communist control crumble. The Chinese way made the supremacy of the Communist Party the overriding objective, and it alone would dictate the pace and scope of economic and social change.
China remains, 20 years later, an authoritarian state under the control of the Communist Party.
Pakistan mosque bomb kills dozens
A bomb has exploded at a mosque in north-western Pakistan during Friday prayers, killing at least 38 people and wounding dozens more.
Police said a suicide bomber detonated explosives at the mosque in Upper Dir district, although some witnesses said the bomb was already in the building.
Nearby Swat Valley has been the scene of heavy fighting between the Pakistani military and Taliban militants.
Upper Dir has also been the scene of sporadic clashes between the two.
The bomb exploded at the mosque in the village of Hayagai Sharki, about 15km from the town of Upper Dir.
The building was severely damaged and many worshippers were reported to have been trapped under the rubble. A resident of the village described the carnage at the scene of the blast.
"A large number of body parts are scattered in the mosque. We don't know whether these are parts of the dead who have been identified or of others," Umer Rehman told the Reuters news agency.
There has been no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast, but the north-west region as a whole has witnessed a number of suicide attacks linked to the Taliban insurgency, as well as the Shia-Sunni sectarian divide.
Condemnation
In March, about 50 people died in a suicide bomb attack at a mosque near Jamrud, on the Khyber Pass route to Afghanistan.
There are fears of a militant backlash in response to the army's military campaign in Swat, analysts say.
The bombing has been condemned by both the Pakistani president and the prime minister who have reiterated Pakistan's determination to establish full government control.
Pakistan's army chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, said in a statement last night that the army had "turned the tide" against the Taliban and reiterated that the army aimed to completely eradicate them from the neighbouring Swat valley.
In recent days the army has captured a number of militant strongholds as it continues its offensive.
More than two million people have been displaced by the fighting.
