One of the major reasons behind the disqualifications of ex-president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanajnai is due to the tensions between Rafsanjani and Iran's Supreme Ledaer, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Soccer is emerging as a focal point of dissent in Saudi Arabia, an oil-rich kingdom that despite banning demonstrations by law is struggling to fend off the waves of change sweeping the Middle East and North Africa.
In the same week, IBM put out two press releases on cloud analytics. Who would have thought that possible a few years ago? Did the big, rigid, and smart IBM of mainframe, Deep Blue, and Watson fame really migrate to the cloud?
Make no mistake about it, Syria has become a proxy war, but neither the Americans nor the Russians are calling the shots. More significant roles are being played by competing regional groupings who are supporting, and even driving, their Syrian allies.
What seems to be lacking the most is an explicit political objective achievable in a time period and at a cost that is domestically palatable. Injecting countless weapons into this imbroglio will not alter the underlying political dynamics and may serve to prolong it.
Fans are voting with their feet. Not in mass protests -- as those that toppled the leaders of Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen -- but by staying away from matches. What effectively amounts to a fan boycott, is most evident in Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
Imagine a land where beautiful people are so stigmatized that they are banished simply for their looks. Does it sound like a sci-fi fantasy dystopia?
Try getting on TV if you're telegenic with an instinct for news. Try again if you lost an eye as a poverty-stricken child from Yemen where even your r...
The Arab Spring uprisings have pushed back reforms of gender discriminatory laws in the region. It would be ironic if the course of women's rights in one of the most repressive Muslim countries flowed against this trend.
Next week's Asian Football Confederation presidential elections designed to elect a leader to clean up two years of alleged financial mismanagement and unethical business conduct are increasingly marred by doubts that real reform is on the horizon.
In the aftermath of this month's Boston Marathon bombings, many are left scratching their heads. Why such senseless violence? What gain could equal the pain brought upon innocent people and ultimately the suspects themselves?
A source with access to a senior Saudi official who has opted to remain anonymous, reveals that Saudi Arabia has managed to secure wide international -- albeit unannounced -- support for its initiative to end the Syrian crisis.
Shining a bright light on the global operations of major multinational corporations, including details of the cash they pay to foreign governments, will not end corruption. But, it is a very good start on a long and vital journey.
In 2004, nearly nine years ago, at the beginning of the school year, an incident took place of such murderous hatred that its happening serves as the defining dimension of the nature of the separatist insurgency and violence that have shaken Chechnya.
With tension building on both shores of the Gulf, the stakes are high for regional governments as well as the international community as they could threaten shipping in the Straits of Hormuz as well as create domestic turmoil in both the Gulf states and Iran.
Amnesty International has produced compelling evidence of massacres, mass abduction, detention beatings, killings and torture by anti-Libyan militia -- backed by the British, French and U.S. So will a post-Assad Syria be any different?