Programming Notes...

If you are reading the blog you probably already know this, but check out our stories about the latest Middle East happenings on time.com (I'm not going to offer programming notes every week, but this is a particularly rich set of pieces):

--Bobby Ghosh has a poignant piece from Iraq on the struggle of one man and his family to build a new life after the fall of Saddam Hussein; the man happens to be Yasser Hussein, one of our brave colleagues in TIME's Baghdad Bureau.

--Nick Blanford has an amazing story from Lebanon about his discovery of one of Hizballah's underground bunkers which enabled the Lebanese Shi'ite group to fire thousands of rockets into Israel during last summer's war. (I should have mentioned it before, but Blanford's recently-published Killing Mr. Lebanon is the definitive account of the Hariri assassination and the Middle East crisis it ignited. Read Jonathan Steele's review in the Guardian.)

--Jumana Farouky has a piece on how the Iranians are explaining this week's seizure of British sailors in the Gulf.

--Tim McGirk has a fascinating inside look from Palestine at the political misfortunes of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the wake of Condeleezza Rice's Middle East shuttle.

--Joe Klein has a column from Jerusalem on what he and Tim learned when Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert invited them over to his residence for an interview this week--it seems he has a hankering to meet Saudi Arabian King Abdullah.

--Speaking of Abdullah, check out my analysis of the Arab summit in Riyadh and why Abdullah is saying those things about the U.S.