Senate Panel Rejects a ‘Public Option’ in Health Plan      "The committee on Tuesday afternoon voted, 15 to 8, to reject an amendment proposed by Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, Democrat of West Virginia, to add a public option called the Community Choice Health Plan, an outcome that underscored the lack of support for a government plan among many Democrats."   

 Taliban cave network in Pakistan mountains   A complex network of 156 caves used by the Taliban and al-Qaeda has been discovered by the Pakistan army dug into rocky mountains close to the Afghan borderRead Article  

 "America is better than Glenn Beck. For all of his celebrity, Mr. Beck is an ignorant, divisive, pathetic figure. On the anniversary of the great 1963 March on Washington he will stand in the shadows of giants — Abraham Lincoln and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Who do you think is more representative of this nation?" Read Opinion

  Iran elections 2009: Iran's vigorous presidential campaign looks too close to call A rattled Ahmadinejad has been reduced to mid-slinging to shore up support.   Telegraph View
  Comments 8 | Comment on this article President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has ended his re-election campaign in Iran by denouncing his opponents for conspiring with "Zionist entities" to make false charges against him. The mud-slinging shows just how rattled he has been by the challenge of the reformist Mir-Hossein Mousavi. Mr Ahmadinejad started as clear favourite but on the eve of polling the contest appears too close to call.While the president's demagogic anti-western style appeals to Iran's rural poor, he is proving too isolationist for the tastes of the country's increasingly sophisticated urban middle classes who have rallied to Mr Mousavi with unexpected enthusiasm. In the absence of reliable polling, observers have had to rely on the often exuberant rallies of the rival camps to gauge the popular mood and from these it has became evident in recent days that the vote will be tight, possibly requiring a run-off ballot in a week's time. It is not inconceivable that Mr Ahmadinejad's hysterical rhetoric may prove counter-productive. His claims of corruption last week against Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president and a leading cleric, led Mr Rafsanjani to write to the country's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini warning him that such allegations could trigger popular unrest. Yet slurs of this kind play well with Mr Ahmadinejad's core support which is firmly anti-establishment and anti-intellectual.But does the outcome of this vigorous campaign actually matter given that ultimate authority in the Islamic republic rests with the ayatollahs, and more particularly with Ayatollah Khameini?Yes it does. The Islamic revolution must rest on an element of popular acquiescence, if not consent, and…