With Iran’s presidential elections set for June 14, Mohammad Yazdi, a clerical member of the Guardian Council — Iran’s constitutional watchdog — has said the constitution rules out women being presidential candidates. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the current, two-term president of Iran, also is forbidden to run for a third term, but is advancing the candidacy of one of his aides.
The final resting place of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev has been revealed and the location is infuriating some Muslims, as well as Americans who wanted his body sent back to Russia.
Reason.TV cites three reasons why Benghazi still matters.
1. We still don’t know what really happened.
2. U.S. officials keep attacking free speech as the cause of the attack.
3. We still don’t have a foreign policy in the Middle East – or anywhere else.
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Adam Johnson, one of the few prominent Americans to visit North Korea, offers his insights on life inside the secretive regime.
Pat Smith, mother of slain State Department officer Sean Smith, who died in the September 11, 2012, attack on an American consulate in Benghazi, tore into the federal government and their efforts to investigate that deadly attack on Tuesday. In an interview with CNN host Jake Tapper, Smith said that she blames former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for failing to ensure her staff was secure and for not taking blame for that failure after they were killed in the line of duty.
Violinist Nigel Kennedy tells how fellow students at the Yehudi Menuhin School in Surrey told him they were abused by the musical director, amid claims that teachers had sexual relations with pupils in Great Britain’s five elite music schools. Ciaran Jenkins reports for Channel 4.
Two members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have been found guilty of plotting to attack Israeli and American targets in Kenya. Iranian nationals Ahmad Abolfathi Mohammad and Sayed Mansour Mousavi were picked up by Kenyan police last year and found to have 15 kilograms of deadly explosives and plans to cause harm.
Martin Mawyer, founder of the Christian Action Network, says Jihadists are establishing terror training camps in the United States. He covers the topic in a newly published book Twilight in America: The Untold Story of Islamist Terrorist Training Camps Inside America. Mawyer welcomes a lawsuit filed against him by the group Muslims of the Americas challenging his claims.
Islamic activists in Bangladesh have called for an anti-blasphemy law to be put in place as a reaction to secular bloggers. One of their demands includes the death penalty for anyone who insults Islam.
Syrian state television has reported that a series of heavy explosions in the capital were caused by Israeli rocket strikes. SANA reports that the blasts early Sunday morning targeted a military research center on the outskirts of the capital. The research center in Jamraya was the target of an earlier Israeli strike in January.
