Saddam Hussein offers Arafat a safe haven if he gets expelled from Israel. Right, cause in Baghdad he could get away from having rockets dropping all around him.

Ben-Gurion: “whoever approaches the Zionist problem from a moral aspect is not a Zionist.”

The first sentence of a wire story: “A Japanese faith healer was sentenced to death for beating 6 people to death with a drumstick during a 1995 exorcism ritual.” So is that a stick used to beat a drum or a chicken part? Enquiring minds want to know.

This week may have seen the last use of Old Sparky.

In 1999 the Pakistani army “mobilized” its nuclear weapons (whatever exactly that means) against India, and the prime minister wasn’t told, although he was informed by Clinton. Before Sharif, Benazir Bhutto had to ask for US intelligence briefings about her country’s nuclear capability, because the army wouldn’t tell her. And we’re continuing to support military rule for what reason now? Well, one reason is that it’s so much better on women’s issues than some other Muslim countries, although when informed about a woman sentenced to death by stoning for adultery because she reported being raped, he seemed a little surprised and said that he’d never given much deep thought to changing the country’s ridiculous adultery laws.