Washington – An American scholar, Haleh Esfandiari, has been charged with trying to topple the Iranian regime, Iran’s state-controlled television reported Monday.
Iran’s Intelligence Ministry accused Esfandiari, director of Middle East programs at the Smithsonian’s Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, of trying to foment a soft revolution by setting up a network “against the sovereignty” of Iran. Esfandiari was imprisoned May 8 after more than four months under virtual house arrest.
Esfandiari’s husband, Shaul Bakhash, a George Mason University professor, said Monday that the charges against his wife were “totally without any basis.”
The hard-line Kayhan newspaper, widely considered a mouthpiece for the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, alleged last week that Esfandiari was fomenting revolution and spying for the United States and Israel.
Esfandiari, a 67-year-old grandmother who is a dual U.S. and Iranian national, was originally in Iran to take care of her 93-year-old mother when her passport was taken in a robbery as she was en route to the airport Dec. 30. When she went in to get a replacement, she was put under interrogation for six weeks.
RIO VISTA, Calif.
Wayward whale, calf continue odyssey
A wayward humpback whale and her calf swimming back to the Pacific reversed course and began heading back up the Sacramento River again Monday.
The two had traveled more than 20 miles south from Sacramento since taking a wrong turn more than a week ago. But they turned around again Monday.
“They’re at this point lost. We don’t think they have any clue,” said Rod McInnis of the National Marine Fisheries Service.
Strong winds prevented officials from tagging the older whale with a satellite tracking device.
WASHINGTON
Carter terms remarks on Bush “careless”
Former President Jimmy Carter said remarks he made about President Bush’s foreign policy were “careless or misinterpreted.”
Carter called Bush’s record on international relations “the worst in history” in an interview published Saturday.
“My remarks were maybe careless or misinterpreted, but I wasn’t comparing the overall administration, and I was certainly not talking personally about any president,” Carter said Monday on NBC’s “Today Show.”
Bush, asked Monday about Carter’s comments, said he gets “criticized a lot from different quarters and that’s what happens when you’re president.”
He didn’t mention Carter or directly react to his remarks.
BLACKSBURG, Va.
Va. Tech gunman had ammo to spare
The gunman who killed 30 people at Virginia Tech was “well- prepared” to continue shooting, a state panel was told Monday.
Police found 203 live rounds in Norris Hall, where Seung-Hui Cho killed 25 students and five faculty members before committing suicide on April 16, State Police Superintendent William Flaherty told a panel investigating the massacre.
Cho also shot two students in a dormitory.
After hearing testimony from a Virginia Tech attorney that privacy laws prohibit release of students’ mental health and other records, panel member Tom Ridge said the group needs to find a way to gain access to Cho’s records. Cho’s family, which would have access, has cooperated so far, Flaherty told reporters.
MINSK, Belarus
Iran grants Belarus access to oil reserves
Iran granted Belarus greater access to oil reserves as the leaders of the countries, both at odds with the U.S., met Monday to cement what the Belarusian leader called a “strategic partnership.”
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on a visit to the former Soviet republic, hailed the “huge potential” for cooperation between the two nations.
Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko is widely referred to in the West as “Europe’s last dictator” for quashing opposition and independent media.
CAIRO
135 Muslim extremists freed from prisons
About 135 Muslim extremists who spent more than a decade in Egyptian prisons have been freed after signing statements renouncing violence, police said Monday.
The prisoners all belonged to al-Jihad, a group once headed by al-Qaeda’s second-in-command, Ayman Al-Zawahri. Egypt began releasing them two weeks ago, officials said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak.
Al-Jihad and the al-Gamaa al- Islamiyya group were accused of participating in the 1981 assassination of President Anwar Sadat. Al-Zawahri was jailed for his involvement but released in 1984. He left Egypt and helped form al-Qaeda with Osama bin Laden in the late 1990s.
BEIJING
Dalai Lama accused of helping “enemies”
A senior Chinese official has accused the Dalai Lama of conspiring with a host of perceived enemies, from Islamic separatists to the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement, to weaken Beijing’s hold over Tibet, state media reported Monday.
In a speech, Tibet’s Communist Party secretary, Zhang Qingli, warned that the Dalai Lama was “ganging up with Taiwan independence forces, the East Turkistan Islamic Movement, democracy movements, and the Falun Gong in an attempt to establish an alliance aimed at splitting the motherland,” the official Xinhua News Agency reported.
Beijing fears the Dalai Lama. who fled into exile in 1959, could be a rallying point against China’s often harsh rule. He has said he wants Tibet granted genuine autonomy in hopes of preserving the region’s Buddhist culture.
