3½ inches

In his weekly radio address, Shrub is still touting the Zawahiri letter, which he says “explain[s] why Iraq is the central front in their war on civilization,” though it is now universally understood to be not only a fake, but as badly executed a fake as the Nigerien yellowcake forgeries. I actually expected, silly me, that Chimpy would drop this latest scam once it was exposed. Forgot for a moment who I was dealing with.

An Iranian woman has been convicted of adultery and sentenced to death by stoning. Iranian officials, though, insist that Iran is a civilized country that no longer stones people to death; she’ll probably be hanged instead, they say. Hey, she might just be lashed. (Update: the Reuters story has a little detail the Observer left out: she was also convicted of helping her lover kill her husband. For that, she received a separate sentence of 15 years. Note that adultery got a stronger sentence than murder.)

The Observer’s Jason Burke notes that, once again, when a natural disaster hit a Muslim nation, the government fell down badly (Musharraf was early on excusing the slow response to the earthquake by comparing it with Bush’s response to Katrina) while Muslim charities, many connected to extremists (but many not), not bogged down by incompetence and corruption, did excellent work, undermining the credibility of yet another secular government.

The Guinness Book of World Records has recognized this man, Mehmet Ozyurek of Turkey, as having the largest nose in the world, 3½ inches. Congratulations, Mr. Ozyurek.