Egypt’s rich and politically connected, often floating above the law with manicures and arrogance, have not fared so well these days.

Hisham Talaat Mustafa, a burly billionaire with ties to the ruling regime, was sentenced to the gallows last week for arranging the murder of his ex-girlfriend, Suzanne Tamim, a talented, but troubled Lebanese pop star. She was found with her throat slit in her high-rise Dubai apartment in July.

Mustafa’s verdict followed a seven-year prison sentence given in March to Mahmoud Ismail, the owner of a huge bank account and a dilapidated ferry that sank in the Red Sea and killed more than 1,000 passengers in 2006. Ismail, who fled to London following the incident, was sentenced in absentia and most likely will not do any jail time.

Embattled political activist and foe of the Egyptian ruling party Ayman Nour has accused the country's government of ordering an attack in which an unknown assailant burned his face and escaped on a motorcycle.

Nour said he believed "the regime is involved in one way or another" in the weekend attack.

"Somebody might have done it on the regime’s behalf or have done it as a complement to the regime," he told The Times on Sunday in a phone interview.

"I was in the car heading to a board meeting at the party when a guy on a motorcycle put a gas box on fire and threw it at me. My face and hair as well as some of my clothes got burned. Then the guy ran away. I saw him; he seemed to be in his late teens," said Nour. "I suffer from first-degree burns in the face and 20% of my hair got burned." 

In a bombshell report published Saturday, the German weekly Der Spiegel says the investigation into the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri is moving toward the conclusion that the Shiite militia Hezbollah was behind the attack.

Everyone in Lebanon has been noticing how Hezbollah's rhetoric has been heating up lately. 

The group's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, made it clear in a number of speeches this week that his party would tolerate neither spies, Israeli "aggression" nor what he described as Lebanese government hypocrisy. 

It's volatile talk ahead of critical June 7 elections in which Hezbollah needs to sway at least some Christians to vote in its favor.

On Monday, Nasrallah warned that the Islamic militant group would be on high alert as Israel prepared to conduct its largest military maneuvers since 1961, a series of armed forces and emergency services drills expected to take place toward the end of the month.

Now, the group's former international relations officer, Nawaf Moussawi, tells the pan-Arab daily Al Sharq al Awsat that the drills are a "rehearsal to confront the repercussions of the assassination of Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, which will lead, if achieved, to a total explosion."

Iran is all astir over the sensational case of the alleged serial killer inspired to hunt her elderly prey by the mystery novels of Agatha Christie.

According to press accounts, Iranian police arrested the 32-year-old alleged killer in the city of Qazvin, about 60 miles northwest of the capital.

She has been identified only by her first name, Mahin. 

The suspect allegedly confessed to luring into her clutches elderly women by offering them rides in her car after prayers. 

Two Israelis meet in New York. Or Nepal. Or Mars. So, you're from Israel? Wha'dja do in the army? 

Within minutes, they work out the connections with enough information for a detailed flow chart of all common landmarks, army buds and acquaintances.

These days, they don't even have to meet. Social networks help keep tabs on old friends. Also to befriend – or "befoe" new ones. 

This week, Israel's General Security Service took the unusual step of issuing a warning urging Israelis to be alert to terrorist activity on the Internet. Specifically, people were warned against unsolicited approaches on social networks by strangers offering meetings abroad or easy money and seeking information. Seemingly innocent contacts might be terrorist efforts to recruit or kidnap. (Presumably this works both ways: A few months ago a Syrian paper had warned of Mossad and CIA recruiting efforts on Facebook as well.)

Depending on one's view, Netanyahu's first visit to Washington ended with a glass half empty or half full.

Among other things, the half-full glass is filled with important U.S. statements about regional involvement and the role that Arab countries must play in the process.

"We emphasize that this is not a one-way street," Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) said, adding that it is vital that the Arab world join a regional road map. Netanyahu, for his part, seemed pleased with the new component requiring the Arab world to take "concrete steps to improve relations with Israel and begin to move forward with reconciliation." Great hopes ride on the Arab peace initiative, which could result in 57 Arab and Muslim countries gradually normalizing relations with Israel.

Very gradually. Normalization is still a ways away, especially in Egypt -- the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel.

Wednesday, an Egyptian lawyer won a lawsuit demanding the ministry of Interior implement a law revoking the citizenship of Egyptians married to Israelis. The 1976 law predates the peace treaty with Israel and refers to Egyptians married to Israelis who have served in the army or who have embraced Zionism as an ideology, explains the Associated Press. The ruling said such marriages undermined national security, as well as the institution of marriage.

Tens of thousands of Egyptians are married to Israeli citizens. Most are married to Arab Israeli women, who don't serve in the army. About 7,000 to 10,000 of them live in Israel.

One of them is Shukri Shazi. For the last 15 years, the head of the association of Egyptians in Israel has lived in Nazareth with his wife of 20 years. He's angered by the ruling. If he were married to a citizen of Holland, he says, he wouldn't pose a threat national security or defile the Egyptian institution of marriage. 

They plan to fight the decision. Shukri Shazi told Israel radio that next week the association will stage a demonstration outside the Egyptian Embassy in Israel, and after that they intend to appeal to the international court.

                                                                      ****

In a related issue, Israel too may be in breach of international law if it goes through with its intention to revoke citizenship of four Arab citizens suspected of terror or acts endangering state security, although Israeli law does permit this in extreme cases.

-- Batsheva Sobelman, in Jerusalem

While the Lebanese Army and Internal Security Forces are busy preparing for the upcoming parliamentary runoff on June 7, the popular television channel LBC is taking its own security measures by banning all political satire until after the elections, the daily Al Akhbar (Arabic) reported this week.

What kind of satire? Below is a scene from LBC's hugely popular political show, "Bas Mat Watan," which has been known to raise the hackles of Lebanon's political elite in the past. 

The clip features an actor impersonating the U.S.-backed prime minister, Fouad Siniora, including an  exaggerated imitation of his face, which was partially frozen after he suffered a stroke.

The deaths are disturbing in their frequency.

The latest victim is a 4-year-old girl from the Nile Delta who this week became the 27th Egyptian to die of bird flu since 2006. The news has further agitated a nation whose real-life threats and imagined pandemic fears have created the spooky, lurking-evil aura of a B horror film.

The rising incidence of bird flu here – the highest level outside of Asia – has spurred a battle between health officials and people accustomed to keeping domestic chickens and geese. According to media reports, 12 new bird flu cases have been detected since April 1. That’s more than the total number of cases for 2008.

The panic over bird flu has fed into Egypt's fears over the global swine flu outbreak. Still, Egypt has no swine flu cases. And yet the government is slaughtering 300,000 pigs raised by Coptic Christians. World health officials say that’s an overreaction, but Egypt apparently couldn’t cope with the specter of another flu epidemic.

Newspapers and TV are full of stories and pictures of pigs in trucks being led to the killing fields and of little boys and girls succumbing to bird flu. It’s a creepy mix of science, funerals, overactive imaginations and talk of mutations and vaccinations.  

As Turkey seeks to establish itself as a regional player, treading on the turf of traditional Middle East powers such as Egypt, a Turkish school has been inaugurated in Cairo. It appears to be a signal that Turkish ambitions stretch beyond the political to the cultural.

In a festive atmosphere, Turkish music echoed across a Cairo suburb this week announcing the opening of Salahaldin International School, the first Turkish school in Egypt.

“People hear a lot about Turkey, but they are not very much familiar with Turkish culture and lifestyle. This school will offer a clearer picture of the Turkish ways of life and mentality,” Shawkat Shimshek, the school’s academic director, told The Times on the sidelines of the event.

Barely noted in the reports about Monday's meeting between President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was a revealing exchange toward the end of the question-and-answer session with a small group of reporters.

The president was asked whether he agreed with Netanyahu's view that dismantling Iran's nuclear program and getting it stop supporting militant groups in the Levant was the first step toward a resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict. 

Obama said while the charged atmosphere in the Middle East makes it tough for Israel to negotiate with its rivals, he viewed the situation the other way around. 

Read the little-cited quotes below:

Iraqi authorities showed a videotape today of the man they say is Abu Omar al Baghdadi confessing to being one of Iraq's most wanted terrorists and admitting that his group received support from the mainstream Iraqi Islamic Party.

The man gave his real name as Ahmed Abed Ahmed Khamees al Mujmai and said he was born in Diyala province in 1969. He said he joined Al Qaeda in Iraq in 2005 and was appointed head of the Islamic State of Iraq, the umbrella group created to unite Al Qaeda-affiliated factions, in 2006.

Wearing a neatly trimmed beard and an open-neck blue shirt, the man appeared relaxed and under no pressure as he answered questions from an interrogator off camera about the activities of the Islamic State.

Financing comes from charities in Syria, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, he said. The group also sustains itself "through robbing, spoils, contractors and other resources."

Another day, another alleged Israeli spy discovered in Lebanon.

This time, the accused, Ziad Homsi, is the former mayor and current deputy mayor of Saadnayel in the Bekaa Valley and a prominent member of  parliamentary leader Saad Hariri's U.S.-backed Future movement. Shortly after his arrest Saturday morning, local supporters protested by blocking the main town road until high-level Future movement figures intervened, appealing for calm.

The daily An-Nahar painted a particularly colorful picture (Arabic) in Sunday's paper, describing how the town mosque broadcast orders for the faithful to remain on the streets and residents of the town used a loudspeaker to share testimonies, describing Homsi as a proud Arab and a pillar of the community.

Hezbollah's Al Manar TV initially reported that Homsi was the regional head of Hariri's electoral machine ahead of June 7 parliamentary elections, but the Future movement folks later issued a statement distancing themselves from Homsi and denying he had any major organizational role in the party.

Where, oh where, will the president speak?

The White House has been scouting possible venues for President Obama’s speech in Cairo early next month. Egyptians are hoping the American leader will address the Muslim world from the Al-Azhar Mosque, the most revered institution in Sunni Islam.

The 10th century, sand-colored mosque would – at least for Egyptian officials – provide a resonant backdrop for Obama to reach out to a Muslim world that grew angry and suspicious of the U.S. during eight years of the Bush administration.

Some great news for women in the conservative Persian Gulf: Kuwaitis elected their first-ever women lawmakers [second item] to parliament. 

Kuwaiti voters headed to the polls today for the third time in three years to elect a new parliament amid an economic downturn that has spurred some to reconsider the Persian Gulf kingdom's experiment in democracy.

Kuwait's ruling emir dissolved parliament earlier this year, accusing it of unnecessarily blocking a series of reforms that he said would  make the economy more efficient, and for going after members of the royal family for alleged corruption.

Pope Benedict XVI was presented with a great many gifts during his visit to the Holy Land. Careful thought had gone into each to ensure the token carried the desired message: religious, political, national and other.

Here's a (partial) list of what the pope left Israel and the West Bank with: 

• Nano-Bible: the whole Bible --all 1.2 million letters and 300,000 words-- engraved on a silicon chip the size of a grain of sand by researchers at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.
• Painting: "Camp Synagogue," by Felix Nussbaum, a Jewish artist who perished in Auschwitz.
• Ancient lamp: a 1,500-year-old menorah, a rare antique lamp, gift of the Jewish National Fund, which had worked for weeks to prepare the site of the Mass at Mt. Precipice near Nazareth.  
• Covenant to save lives: Magen David Adom, Israel's largest medical organization, conceived a covenant addressing the highest religious value of all, saving lives, from an interfaith perspective. Written and signed by distinguished Jewish, Muslim and Christian leaders.
• Ancient map: a framed copy of Heinrich Bunting's famous 16th century depiction of Jerusalem as the center of the clover leaf-shaped Old World, presented by Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat upon welcoming Benedict to Jerusalem.
• The Gospel of Luke: a volume of 65 poster-size pages written in ornate Arabic script by a Bethlehem artist of Islamic calligraphy. The Bethlehem mayor commissioned the Muslim Yasser Abu Saymeh for the project, a message of religious coexistence that took two months to complete. 

  Bronze sculpture (right): Jerusalem artist Aharon Bezalel's sculpture designed of 10 bronze figures welded together, the tallest three engraved with a cross, moon and menorah in a sign of religious coexistence. This completes a circle for the artist, who had met with Pope John Paul II and presented him with a sculpture honoring the memory of the Holocaust. It is on display in the Vatican. 

A few of the gifts combined ancient and modern, some were an interfaith statement, and others yet hinted at political issues, such as the sash that was given to him when he visited a West Bank refugee camp; it was embroidered with a key--a symbol of Palestinian refugees' desire to return to their homes, now in Israel.

Pope Benedict brought some gifts with him too, such as the ventilator for a children's hospital and a mosaic representation of the birth of Jesus he presented to Bethlehem. And, he left a note in the Western Wall.

But some people wanted the pope to return some stuff too.

Hezbollah is "closer than any time before to eradicating the Zionist regime and establishing a Palestinian state," the party's International Relations chief Nawaf Moussawi told Al Manar today, just weeks before Lebanon's hotly contested elections.

His comments were translated and posted on the website nowlebanon.com, a news site supported by the U.S.-backed March 14 alliance and affiliated with the New Opinion think tank, which maintains a media monitoring team.

“The security measures taken are not enough to face the enemy," said Moussawi, who is running for a parliamentary seat representing the southern city of Tyre.