By Bushra Juhi

The Canadian Press, BAGHDAD - A roadside bomb ripped through a bus Monday and killed 10 people working for an organization opposed to the Iranian regime, police said. Another 12 were injured in the blast north of Baghdad.

The blast occurred just after daybreak near Khalis, 80 kilometres north of Baghdad in Diyala province, an area notorious for such attacks, provincial police said. All the dead were workers at the Ashraf base of the Mujahedeen Khalk, or MEK, which opposes Iran's regime.

By Salam Faraj

Agence France Presse, BAGHDAD - At least 52 people were killed in a bloody explosion of violence across Iraq on Monday, including a spate of bombings against buses carrying people to work.

The attacks underlined the parlous security situation in Iraq as agreement on the key defense and interior ministries remained elusive despite the formation of a new government on May 20, five months after national elections.

NCRI - "Although the Iranian regime does not have nuclear weapons yet, its incitement of violence shows that if it did acquire such weapons, it will threaten its neighbors,"  noted an article in the Arab daily As-Sharq al-Awsat, published in London on May 20. The daily also raised alarm on the Iranian regime's support for terrorism in Iraq and other countries.

By Thomas Harding

The Daily Telegraph - The Army now believes that the Lynx helicopter shot down over central Basra at the weekend was most probably hit by a surface-to-air missile, obtained possibly from neighbouring Iran, after missile casings were discovered on the third floor of a nearby building, security sources in the city said yesterday.

By Allan Hall, Berlin, and Tom Walker

The Sunday Times - PRESSURE is growing on Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, to bar Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran , the president of Iran, if he tries to attend the World Cup.

Ahmadinejad has referred to Israel as a "tumour" and said that it should be "wiped from the map". His presence in Germany, where Holocaust denial is illegal and carries a maximum prison sentence of five years, is potentially embarrassing. But he is a football fan and is thought to be anxious to see Iran's first game against Mexico in Nuremberg on June 11.

Trevor Kavanagh WebLog

Sun Blog - MY column in Monday's Sun has sparked a reaction from readers.
 
It described the extraordinary decision by Foreign Secretary Jack Straw to support and impose a ban on the Iranian resistance movement which is brutally crushed by the Ayatollahs' secret police.

NCRI - Iran regime secretly tried to get information about weapons of mass destruction in the Netherlands, the Dutch intelligence service (AIVD) said in its annual report.

"The AIVD finds that so-called countries of concern have persisted in 2005 in their attempts to get information and means for the deployment of weapons of mass destruction," the intelligence services said.

NCRI - Canadian Press quoted Foreign Affairs department officials as saying that an Iranian-Canadian professor has been arrested in Iran. Spokeswoman Marie-Christine Lilkoff said the department was aware of the detention of the Canadian-Iranian national. She added that consular officials in Iran are in touch with the man's family and providing assistance.

She would not reveal the man's name or any other details, citing privacy concerns.

Commentary By Steve Forbes

The Washington Times - At a Feb. 15 briefing before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice declared Iran is "in open defiance" of the world community for violations of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Iran's persistent and flagrant development of a uranium enrichment program, despite enormous international pressure, is just one more disquieting incident in Iran's long history of troublemaking on the international stage.