Mahmoud

Mahmoud Adjoodani, who became a high school mathematics teacher in Anne Arundel County after retiring as an Iranian government official, died Saturday of congestive heart failure at his home in Chevy Chase. He was 88.He had lived in Linthicum from 1965 until 1974 and then in Severna Park until 1985.He taught math at Andover High School, now North County High School, from 1965 to 1979.Born in Tehran, Iran, he was a graduate of the Sorbonne in Paris, where he earned master's degrees in mathematics and physics.

BEIRUT, Lebanon - - A high-ranking conservative cleric called for the arrest of Iran's opposition leaders Friday while a counterpart demanded the release of political prisoners as the nation's political and religious establishment showed no signs of reconciliation following the disputed June 12 re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In addition, many lawmakers and clergy from Ahmadinejad's own conservative political camp fumed over his proposed Cabinet, including his decision to nominate three female ministers.

A mother and her live-in boyfriend are being held today after a severe beating left the mother's 2-year-old daughter in critical condition.Police said the girl had been beaten and burned with cigarettes and an electrical appliance that left third-degree burns on her body.Serrena Coates' face was swollen and her eyes puffed and swollen shut as she battled to stay alive at the Johns Hopkins Hospital pediatric intensive care unit today, said Officer Iman Mahmoud of the Southwestern District.

TEHRAN, Iran - -Huge swaths of the Iranian capital erupted in fiery riots that stretched into the early hours Sunday as hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared victory in his quest for a second term amid allegations of widespread fraud and reports that his main challenger had been placed under house arrest. At the same moment the president was promising a "bright and glorious future" for Iran in a late-night televised address, supporters of reformist rival Mir Hossein Mousavi were battling with police and militiamen in riot gear throughout Tehran in the most serious clashes in the capital since a student uprising 10 years ago. In the streets and squares where young Iranians had danced and waved green banners in support of Mousavi days ago, baton-wielding police chased and beat mobs of hundreds of demonstrators who chanted, "Down with dictatorship!"

BIET LAHIA, Gaza Strip -- It is with decidedly mixed emotions that Mahmoud greets the arrival of the Palestinian police in the Gaza Strip.He fears they will break up a tiny bit of Jewish-Arab cooperation in which he is involved; that is, the stealing of cars in Israel and smuggling them into the Gaza Strip."

BEIRUT, Lebanon -- Iran's judiciary acquitted a moderate former government official of espionage charges yesterday, prompting vehement criticism by supporters of hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and escalating the infighting within Iran's leadership. Authorities had charged Hossein Mousavian, Iran's former nuclear negotiator and confidant of pragmatist cleric Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani, with divulging state secrets to foreign countries this year. But the judiciary announced that the Revolutionary Court was clearing him of a pair of espionage charges, while convicting him of a far lesser charge of propagating against the system, a security charge often handed to journalists.

Now that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has flagrantly dismissed a U.S.-led attempt to restrict his country's nuclear program and President Bush has reiterated his outrage at the repression of regimes such as Tehran's, is there anything left to discuss? All the bluster and rhetoric on display this week at the United Nations plays well to the two leaders' audiences at home, but Iran's race for nuclear proficiency remains deeply troubling, an intractable dilemma with no resolution in sight.

RAMALLAH, West Bank - Mahmoud Abu Rabee thinks he saved this city this week. The 12-year-old boy grinned as he described how he stared down Israeli tanks, throwing rocks at them. Before dawn yesterday, the tanks left. "They ran away," Mahmoud said, standing in the ruins of the Boy Scout office in the Amari refugee camp used by soldiers as a temporary base. "The Israelis are cowards. They are afraid." The Israeli army withdrew from Ramallah and other West Bank cities early yesterday because the United States demanded that to help prepare the way for an American peace envoy.

BEIRUT, Lebanon - - A high-ranking conservative cleric called for the arrest of Iran's opposition leaders Friday while a counterpart demanded the release of political prisoners as the nation's political and religious establishment showed no signs of reconciliation following the disputed June 12 re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In addition, many lawmakers and clergy from Ahmadinejad's own conservative political camp fumed over his proposed Cabinet, including his decision to nominate three female ministers.

TEHRAN, Iran -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's populism and attacks on the West trumped criticism of his handling of the nation's financial crisis as results released yesterday indicated that the hard-line leader had won strong support in parliamentary elections. Reformists opposed to the president stood little chance in Friday's voting. Hundreds of their members, including high-profile candidates, had been removed from the ballot by the Guardian Council, a body of clerics and jurists that scrutinizes candidates for loyalty to the country's Islamic system.

On a late-April trip to Iran, I had a hard time getting people to talk about the country's looming presidential race. My questions about the election, to be held Friday, were dismissed as irrelevant in a nation of apathetic voters who knew that real power was vested not in the president but in Iran's unelected supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and a handful of clerics. Most of the people I spoke to seemed resigned to the reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. And they felt that the election didn't really matter, given Mr. Khamenei's tightfisted control.

We all know that salt is an essential ingredient of life. It helps maintain the electrolyte balance of our cells. It helps transmit nerve impulses. It aides muscle contraction and relaxation. Our blood is 0.9 percent salt. But as with most anything, says Dr. Mahmoud Alikhan, cardiologist with the St. Joseph Medical Center, moderation is the key - and too much salt can be unhealthy. How much salt does a typical healthy adult need? The average American eats about 5 to 10 grams of sodium chloride in his daily diet, and that is too much.

TEHRAN, Iran -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's populism and attacks on the West trumped criticism of his handling of the nation's financial crisis as results released yesterday indicated that the hard-line leader had won strong support in parliamentary elections. Reformists opposed to the president stood little chance in Friday's voting. Hundreds of their members, including high-profile candidates, had been removed from the ballot by the Guardian Council, a body of clerics and jurists that scrutinizes candidates for loyalty to the country's Islamic system.

TEHRAN, Iran -- Iran watchers sought to make sense yesterday of a spat between the conservative speaker of parliament and the country's hard-line president over a budgetary issue that found Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei issuing a rare but opaque opinion. The incident was the latest sign of discord with the Islamic Republic's byzantine ruling system, which combines elements of a democratically elected republic with a theocracy headed by Shiite Muslim clerics, with Khamenei over both. Parliament Speaker Gholam Ali Haddad-Adel read yesterday from the text of the supreme leader's opinion, which the lawmaker said backed his position in a dispute with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

BEIRUT, Lebanon -- Iran's judiciary acquitted a moderate former government official of espionage charges yesterday, prompting vehement criticism by supporters of hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and escalating the infighting within Iran's leadership. Authorities had charged Hossein Mousavian, Iran's former nuclear negotiator and confidant of pragmatist cleric Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani, with divulging state secrets to foreign countries this year. But the judiciary announced that the Revolutionary Court was clearing him of a pair of espionage charges, while convicting him of a far lesser charge of propagating against the system, a security charge often handed to journalists.

The invitation for dinner with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came from the Iranian Mission to the United Nations. The scene was the darkly brocaded Barclay Room of New York's Intercontinental Hotel. A small group of journalists, along with Iran experts from academia and think tanks, sat around a square table lit by chandeliers, and set with plates of oriental salads and vases of roses. No alcohol was served. Mr. Ahmadinejad swept in after giving a defiant speech last week on Iran's nuclear program at the United Nations.

TEHRAN, Iran - Iranian President-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said yesterday that the Islamic Republic would move ahead with what he called its peaceful nuclear program and that the country "didn't necessarily need America" on its path to self-reliance. In his first news conference since his lopsided runoff victory last week, the hard-line mayor of Tehran brushed off remarks by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who on Fox News Sunday called Iran's presidential election a "mock election" and referred to Ahmadinejad as "no friend of democracy."

TEHRAN, Iran -- Iran watchers sought to make sense yesterday of a spat between the conservative speaker of parliament and the country's hard-line president over a budgetary issue that found Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei issuing a rare but opaque opinion. The incident was the latest sign of discord with the Islamic Republic's byzantine ruling system, which combines elements of a democratically elected republic with a theocracy headed by Shiite Muslim clerics, with Khamenei over both. Parliament Speaker Gholam Ali Haddad-Adel read yesterday from the text of the supreme leader's opinion, which the lawmaker said backed his position in a dispute with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Now that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has flagrantly dismissed a U.S.-led attempt to restrict his country's nuclear program and President Bush has reiterated his outrage at the repression of regimes such as Tehran's, is there anything left to discuss? All the bluster and rhetoric on display this week at the United Nations plays well to the two leaders' audiences at home, but Iran's race for nuclear proficiency remains deeply troubling, an intractable dilemma with no resolution in sight.

NEW YORK -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad faced sharp criticism yesterday about his opinions on women, gays, Israel, nuclear weapons and the Holocaust in an appearance at Columbia University, where protesters bearing signs reading "Hitler Lives" lined the streets and the university's president issued blistering introductory remarks inside a crowded lecture hall. Ahmadinejad exhibits "all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator," said Columbia President Lee C. Bollinger, who went on to question the Iranian leader's record on human rights and his statements that the Holocaust was a myth.