Iran test fires three missiles with range sufficient to strike Israel, parts of Europe, and American bases in the Persian Gulf, just days after the leaders of the U.S., France and Britain disclosed the existence of a secret nuclear plant in Iran, and only a few days before the first direct contact between Iran and the U.S. in decades, in talks between Iran and six major world powers scheduled to take place in Geneva on Thursday.

The Philippine government struggles to cope with the aftermath of Typhoon Ketsana, locally known as Ondoy, which killed at least 140 people. With thousands of Filipinos still trapped by floods, the death toll is expected to rise.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is re-elected. Her center-right Christian Democratic Union will will almost certainly form a new governement with the pro-business Free Democratic Party, leaving behind the center-left Social Democrats who are part of the current governing coalition.

Nigerian forces storm the headquarters of the Islamic militant group Boko Haram killing 100 people, including the group’s deputy leader.

The last ruling Communist Party in Europe loses its majority in parliamentary elections in Moldova, less than 4 months after a disputed election led to widespread anti-communist protests in the country.

Iranian riot police use batons and tear gas to break up a group of protesters mourning the death of Neda Agha-Soltan and other demonstrators who were killed in the post-election violence last month.

Ireland agrees to accept two Guantanamo Bay detainees in order to help U.S. President Barack Obama in his effort to close the detention center by January. The prisoners, both of Uzbek descent, will be among the few to be resettled in Europe. Previously, France agreed to accept one prisoner, while Italy has agreed to take three.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates says that as many as 5,000 troops could return home from Iraq sooner than expected because violence has been down and Iraqi forces have been doing well since the U.S. withdrew from Iraqi cities last month.

A trial will begin Saturday for 20 demonstrators who participated in the post-election protests in Iran last month. The defendants are accused of having contact with the exiled opposition group The People’s Mujahedin, vandalizing public and state property, attacking security forces, and carrying firearms, among other charges.

President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Odinga have led a unity government since 2008, when the two agreed to share power after disputed elections led to a outbreak of violence in which more than 1,500 Kenyans were killed.

But the coalition, which has always been shaky, is now on the verge of collapse. Prime Minister Odinga complains that President Kibaki has tried to sideline him, while Kibaki accuses Odigna of trying to incite a coup. Earlier this week, Odinga called for new elections if the dispute cannot be resolved.

Inspired by Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, the women organizing the boycott hope to pressure the male-dominated political leadership to negotiate by denying them sex until they do.

“We have looked at all issues which can bring people to talk and we have seen that sex is the answer,” said Rukia Subow, one of the organizers.

It worked for the Greeks.

British troops withdraw from Basra, officially bringing an end to six years of combat operations in Iraq.

Indians in nine states and two territories head to the polls for the third round of voting in the country’s month-long general elections.

Four bystanders are killed when a car appears to have deliberately attempted to crash into an open bus carrying members of the Dutch royal family during a Queen’s Day celebration.

WIDE ANGLE: The ANC, or African National Congress party is expected to win elections there on Wednesday. Can you tell us what this party stands for, and how it has changed since Nelson Mandela was the party’s leader?

AZAD ESSA: The mantra of this party has always been “the people shall govern.” If anything, the party and its supporters believe that this mantra, over the past 10 years, with Thabo Mbeki as the second [post-apartheid] president, was lost. Thabo Mbeki was a suited-up politician with a foreign education. The ANC supporters believe that today, this party is back in working class control with a grassroots leader like Jacob Zuma.

WIDE ANGLE: Jacob Zuma is the leader of the ANC and likely the next president of South Africa. But Zuma has been dogged by corruption charges that were only recently dropped. What exactly was he accused of, and does he have the trust of the South African people?

AZAD ESSA: Jacob Zuma is a very, very interesting character. He’s had I think something like 750 counts of corruption against him — all sorts of racketeering, and other shady deals that he’s been accused of. The most significant issue was this arms deal with a French company, a multi-million dollar arms deal, and Zuma was accused of accepting bribes, et cetera, et cetera. He was charged and as a result was pushed to resign; he lost his job as deputy president. The issue has dragged on from that time, since 2005, and has been dropped and recharged and dropped, but now it’s been dropped completely because there’s enough evidence to suggest that the entire accusation against him was motivated politically. It’s very interesting that that happened last week, one week before the elections.

The trust of the people issue is very incredible. We have three types of voter in this country at the moment: the guy who’s supporting Zuma, the guy who’s afraid of Zuma, and the person who is going to vote for the ANC despite Zuma. The Zuma supporter, I call him the Zumamaniac, doesn’t mind that Zuma might be really guilty of these corruption charges. For him, everything that’s pitched against Zuma is a political conspiracy, and Zuma and the working class cause have become synonymous with each other. At the same time, you have sort of the middle class liberal thinker in South Africa who is very much against Zuma — Zumaphobic in a way. He believes that Zuma has his charm, but until and unless we get a case and he’s tried in a court of law and found not guilty, I’m not going to trust this guy, and we’re only really going to get somewhere in this country if we stem corruption from the start. And then, as I say, there’s the third guy who says, I’m supporting the ANC because of the history that it brings, and what the ANC stands for in the first place.

WIDE ANGLE: Who’s the opposition in this race?

AZAD ESSA: The Democratic Alliance headed by Capetown mayor Helen Zille is the main opposition. Now, the Democratic Alliance is still majority-white; it still represents white interests, or is perceived to represent white interests. Nonetheless, over the past 2, 3 years it has emerged in leaps and bounds and has tried to rebrand itself as a truly South African party. The thing with the Democratic Alliance is that it’s a pro-capital party, and its campaigning has been with that focus — it’s striving to reduce labor laws to some extent, and it’s trying to attract foreign investment, and this is not going down very well with most people in the country. So it’s a very strange campaign, because while it’s trying to attract all, most South Africans are still very strongly allied with trade unions, so the D.A. looses a lot of possible membership because of that.

But what’s interesting about this election is the advent of the new opposition, and that’s the Congress of People Party or COPE. What happened after liberation when the country became a democracy is that obviously there were going to be very different ideas about how the country should be governed, but these differences have never come to the fore as they have today, and this has lead to the split of the ANC and the creation of the Congress of the People Party.

COPE is made up of all the guys within the ANC who have problems with Zuma’s presidency. COPE just emerged recently, and so it’s unclear what they stand for. So if you’re not supporting the ANC, you have a problem regarding who to support, because it’s not necessarily that these guys promote or offer anything much better, they just promise a future without Zuma. In the D.A. election campaign, you see posters out on the street saying “Stop Zuma. Vote for the D.A.” So this kind of demonizing of Jacob Zuma is almost the basis of both election campaigns.

WIDE ANGLE: The results of this election seem to be a foregone conclusion — everyone is expecting Jacob Zuma and the ANC to win — but nonetheless, people are calling it one of the most important elections in South African history. Why is this election so important?

AZAD ESSA: I think the first thing is that there’s been a surge in the amount of people taking part in this election, so we’re looking at 23 million people out of a total population of around 50 million that are going to be voting, so that’s an incredible achievement, and that has also come from, believe it or not, this Obama sort of mania, where people believe we’ve got to take part to change things.

Probably the most significant thing is the tears within the ANC. It’s a very fascinating and very important time in South African politics because people are wondering, is this the election that showcases the beginning of a real opposition in this country? Because until now there has been no real opposition, I mean, in 2004, the ANC won 69 percent of the vote. With the advent of COPE, and with the D.A. gaining because of people not wanting to vote for Zuma, people are wondering if it’s going to be less than 60 percent for the ANC, so maybe in the next election in 2014, maybe there will be a real opposition by that time.

Vote for Benazir’s Blood follows wealthy feudal landlord and former U.S. ambassador Abida Hussain on election day — as she competes for votes against her own equally illustrious cousin.

You Cannot Hide from Allah shows the rise and fall of Ishan Khan, a man of humble Pakistani origins who moves to the U.S., hits the jackpot in a lottery, and returns to his hometown to run for mayor.

Results from the recent provincial elections in Iraq saw Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s Dawa Party gain power in many of the country’s provinces. According to preliminary returns, Dawa is now the most powerful Shiite party in Iraq. No small potatoes.

The word dawa means “a call to Islam.” If one of your infidel-types converts to Islam, he is said to have answered the Dawa. I.e., Cat Stevens + Dawa = Yusuf Islam. The party was established in the late ‘50s as a Shiite political movement opposed to secular governments and spent quite a few years underground, relentlessly persecuted by Saddam Hussein’s Baathist government.

A young scholar named Muhammad Baqr al-Sadr played a leading role in forming the movement. (If his name sounds familiar, yes indeed, he was the father-in-law of the U.S.’s favorite black-turbaned, thick-bearded radical cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr.) Muhammad Baqr and his supporters gained the enmity of the secular Baath Regime soon after its military coup. Surprise, surprise, the Baath party goal of “complete elimination of Islamic movements” did not bode well for Dawa. In 1971, Iraqi Security agents arrested one of the party’s founders and when he refused to disclose any information; his interrogators – who apparently were actually pretty serious about this whole hating-Islamic-movements-thing — slowly immersed him in a vat of sulfuric acid.

Not to be outdone by his interrogation personnel, Saddam Hussein declared in 1980 that Muhammad Baqr al-Sadr and his sister Amina were a significant threat to his regime and ordered their arrest. According to the Dawa party, Amina was quite a firebrand in her own right. She led the women’s branch of the party, wrote for its publications and when her brother was captured, gave a rabble-rousing speech on the steps of a holy shrine that incited the populace to riot. He was freed the next day. The freedom was short-lived, however. Learning the lesson that they probably shouldn’t have left an eloquent orator behind to rile up the masses, the Baath party arrested both Muhammad and Amina at the same time and they were killed shortly thereafter.

Although the party went further underground during this period, it occasionally emerged in the early ‘80s to launch violent attacks against the Iraqi regime and its allies – including the U.S. A Dawa splinter group was blamed for the ’83 U.S. embassy bombings in Kuwait. The party also made an attempt against U.S.-Best-Buddy Saddam Hussein. It was July, 1982 and Saddam was visiting a small provincial town during the holiday of Eid al-Adha. As he drove by, a woman with hands covered in blood ran up to the car and planted her palms on the door. Fair enough, that’s pretty creepy, you might say to yourself, but probably not a great assassination attempt. Turns out, though, in parts of the Middle East, bloody handprints are a good luck charm! She had just sacrificed a sheep and wanted to keep bad things away from the beloved leader! Or not… This particular lady was no well-wisher and the handprints marked the car so that a Dawa sniper would know which one to open fire on. Oh PSYCH, Saddam! Or not….The fearless leader survived and then had the village pretty much destroyed. Party members were executed or forced into exile in Iran and Syria, returning only after 2003.

Today, in a change of allies, the party has found prominence backing U.S-led offensives against sectarian violence. Although they are traditionally a Shiite party, supporters have lately stressed rule of law and supply of basic services over religious ideology. Dawa’s own website says that “Since its foundation, the party has never seen itself to be a Shi’a party, nor defined itself as such whether in public or private.” Perhaps the most promising sign for this up and coming movement? The number one principle listed on their “Our Beliefs ” web page is “1. Party for all Iraqis.” Sounds like something Rodney Dangerfield would want them to do. I think they could use some fun times.

(Dawa Party; Richard Engel – War Journal; Inter Press Service; Washington Post)

“Despite dangerous circumstances that we come across everyday, we have to show our potential in politics rather than stay in our homes,” said Nibras al-Mamour, a woman running for office in Baghdad. 

Some female candidates fearlessly roam the streets plastering campaign posters on buildings marked by remnants of the ongoing insurgency. But fearful of the threats, others are running more subtle campaigns, giving out small cards to voters at private gatherings, conferences, and forums. Some campaign posters featuring women’s faces have been torn or defaced, and on Wednesday, a female campaign worker was murdered in her home, amidst pre-election violence that has also killed three male candidates.

Female politicians haven’t always faced such difficulties. In the 1950s, Iraq was the first Arab country to name a female minister and adopt a progressive family laws. But since the fall of Saddam Hussein and the ascendance of religious parties, professional women in Iraq have become targets for extremists, says reporter Sahar Issa. 

At the same time, Issa says, during the wars of the past several decades, people started accepting women as never before. While men fought, the number of women in the work force surged. 

“If you look at history, it’s the men who go to the front to fight it’s the women who keep the front,” Issa says. “They simply have to stand up the responsibility and shoulder it.” 

Though women make up more than a quarter of the candidates, many don’t expect that men will vote for women in this upcoming election.

We are seen as incapable of assuming a political seat, being considered a thief of a male place,” said Suha Hussein, a candidate in the southern province of Muthana. “When we approach a man asking for his vote, he either turns his face or he listens to us with contempt.”

Elections are being held on Saturday in 14 of Iraq’s 18 provinces.