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Los Angeles Times

Ruling Yemen gets even more complicated

President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who once described ruling Yemen as dancing on the heads of snakes, has stayed in power for three decades through a clever mix of money, tribal ploys and government corru

In Yemen, the truth is a casualty of war

Reporting from Cairo and Sana'a, Yemen

The terrorist who's dead is still alive.

A perverse contradiction? No, just another day in the Yemen news cycle, where rebels, separatists, extremists and government officials conjure a surreal world of spin, lies and propaganda. It makes one wonder if reality exists at all in this cruel and beautiful land.

Iran's Political Winds are Shifting

In late December, I received a New Year's e-mail from a former Iranian diplomat. The contact surprised me. I had known the man when I lived in Tehran from 2004 to '07, but I hadn't heard from him in more than two years. In 2007, as the Ahmadinejad administration began tarring its ideological enemies as foreign stooges, he cut relations with me.

The LA Times reviews Jason Motlagh's work on the Mumbai Attacks in the Virginia Quarterly Review

From Nov. 26 to 29, 2008, 10 gunmen wielded guns, grenades and terror in the Indian city of Mumbai. Acting in five teams of two, they killed 163 people and wounded 300 others in attacks on sites including a train station, two elite hotels, a Jewish center, a hospital and the city's streets. All of the gunmen were young Pakistani Muslims; all but one were killed by authorities. The lone survivor, who has pleaded guilty, attends his trial, which continues a year after the attacks.

Drug Cartels Imperil Immigrants in the Desert

See Related Slideshow by David Rochkind on the Los Angeles Times site.

Reporting from Altar, Mexico — On a cloudless afternoon in northern Sonora, migrants and drug runners lounge in equal numbers under scattered mesquite trees, playing cards or sipping water. The sun climbs high and the temperature rises well over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. In such heat, nothing, human or otherwise, moves more than required.

Iran Sounds an Awful Lot Like Iraq

Jon Sawyer is the director of the Washington-based Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. He has reported from Iran and throughout the Middle East.

AN EMBATTLED president, a Congress distracted by a sex scandal, looming midterm elections — and yet overwhelming agreement, with scant debate or publicity, on fateful legislation that set the nation on a path to war.

It happened eight autumns ago, when three-quarters of the House of Representatives and every single senator voted for regime change in Iraq.

Has it happened again, on Iran?