Today's Baghdad is a labyrinth of blast walls and checkpoints. Few buildings have been spared the scars of battle. The huge influx of imported cars - combined with the bottlenecks at security checkpoints - means traffic is slowed to a halt in many parts of this war-ravaged capital.

Perhaps nostalgic for the order, if not the politics, of a different era, Iraqis are forwarding a popular chain email that shows snapshots of Baghdad in the 1960s. Even if you're familiar with Baghdad streets and squares only through TV footage and newspaper photos, I think you'll find these images remarkable.

I have no idea who the photographer is or anything else about the origins of these photos, but my friend Mohammed sent them to me today and we spent a few minutes looking at the pictures and silently absorbing how far from any standard of normal this city is now. In the decade captured by the photos - the 1960s - the Hashemite monarchy was newly overthrown, there were two military coups and then the advent of the Arab Socialist Baath Party in 1968.

Al Shuhada Bridge

Abu Nawas Street along the Tigris River

Tahrir Square

Souq al Safafeer (antiques and copper market)

An apparent campaign of violence against Iraqi Christians in the volatile city of Mosul has killed at least eight people since Feb. 14, according to Iraqi authorities and human rights groups.

Human Rights Watch this week called on the Iraqi government to better protect its Christian minority, especially as attacks increase ahead of parliamentary elections March 7. HRW says the separate attacks "appear to be politically motivated, given the country's looming national election."

HRW's statement mentioned five killings of Christians:

- Feb. 14 Rayan Salem Elias, a Chaldean man, was shot dead outside his home.

- Feb. 15 Gunmen stormed a grocery store and killed the Christian owner, Fatukhi Munir

- Feb. 16 Assailants posing as secret police approached two Christian university students, cousins Zaya Toma, 22, and Ramsin Shmael, 21, at a bus stop in the Tahrir district of Mosul. The students were asked for their ID cards, on which their obviously Christian names are printed. One of the gunmen shot Toma at point-blank range, killing him instantly. Shmael tried to flee and was shot twice -- his teeth were shattered -- and the gunmen left him for dead. He survived. 

- Feb. 17 The bullet-riddled body of Wissam George, a 20-year-old Assyrian teaching student, was found after he disappeared on his way to school.

- Feb. 20 The body of Adnan Hanna al Dahan, a 57-year-old Syrian Orthodox grocer, was found in northern Mosul. Assailants had kidnapped him from his store a few days earlier.

Last night, McClatchy's Iraqi correspondent in Mosul alerted us to three more deaths that occurred Monday:

- Feb. 22 Gunmen broke into a Christian family's home in the Saha neighborhood of western Mosul, killing a father and his two sons, local police said.

In the case of Toma and Shmael, HRW wrote, the family had moved north to Mosul from Baghdad in the summer of 2007 after receiving threats that warned them to convert to Islam or be killed. That was at the height of Iraq's sectarian violence, in which Christians found themselves especially vulnerable as a Sunni-Shiite civil war raged around them.

HRW quoted the Chaldean archbishop of Mosul, Emil Shimoun Nona, as saying the recent attacks could prompt a new wave of Christian refugees fleeing from northern Iraq. Nona was installed as archbishop after the body of his predecessor, Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahno, was discovered in March 2008, 10 days after he was kidnapped from the Holy Spirit Church in Mosul.

Since 2003, between 250,000 and 500,000 Christians -- about half the Christian population -- left the country, according to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees.

Human Rights Watch document targeted killings of Chaldo-Assyrians in Mosul in late 2008 in a 51-page report that was released in November 2009. The title is, "On Vulnerable Ground: Violence against Minority Communities in Nineveh Province's Disputed Territories."

The Iraqi government announced today that an internal investigation found that the controversial bomb-detecting devices its security forces use -- the ones derided as "magic wands" or "Ouija boards" and which are nearly universally mocked -- are mostly effective and will remain in use.

Ali al Dabbagh, the Iraqi government spokesman, said in a statement that some of the devices were found to be fake or ineffective, but that most of them worked fine and would be kept in service at checkpoints. The faulty models would be taken out of circulation and replaced, al Dabbagh added. The Iraqi government is still looking into the procurement of the British-made device and plans to sue the manufacturer for the faulty models.

I blogged a few weeks ago about the device, which is is shaped like a gun with a metal sensor on the nose. If a bomb (or perfume, soap and detergent) is detected, the sensor moves toward the suspicious substance.

The following is more from the AP:

The statement did not say exactly how many of the wands would be withdrawn from service, but al-Dabbagh later told The Associated Press that only 50 percent of the gadgets were operational. However, he added, measures were being taken to expand the use of trained dogs at checkpoints to detect explosives.

Britain halted the export of the ADE651 last month after a BBC report found the device uses technology similar to anti-shoplifting tags that cannot uncover explosives. Police later arrested the company's director on suspicion of fraud. He has since been released, though an investigation continues.

Last month, the Iraqis promised to halt the use of the gadgets and seek an alternative if the investigation determined they were flawed. But al-Dabbagh's statement said only that individual devices had problems while supporting the use of the gadgets overall.

As late as June 2009, the U.S. military told Iraq the device did not work. It distributed a study, which used laboratory testing and X-ray analysis that found the ADE651 ineffective.

A week or so ago, I started hearing a buzz about the new warning labels Egypt's health ministry is slapping on packs of cigarettes. Like many Western countries, Egypt previously used disturbing images of hospitalized cancer patients or photos of blackened lungs as a smoking deterrent, but this latest campaign is far more daring by local standards.

 The new label (shown at left) depicts a droopy cigarette with the message: "Smoking for a long period of time affects marital relations."

In other words, put the cigarettes down or you might not, um, rise to the occasion. Those are fightin' words in a country where a slight to one's manhood or virility is serious business.

I did a quick Google search this morning and found that Matt Bradley from the Abu Dhabi-based newspaper The National beat me to the punch on this one. He had a funny story yesterday about the new warning labels -- under the headline: "In Egypt, real men don't smoke."

Trouble is, they do, as Bradley points out. He cited a recent World Health Organization study that showed nearly 50 percent of Egyptian men over the age of 25 use tobacco, compared to less than 2 percent of women.

With half of adult men smoking (in a country with a population of more than 80 million), that means there are plenty of guys here who don't take too kindly to the suggestion that they might be less than impressive in the bedroom.

Bradley's story in The National noted this reaction from an Egyptian legislator (presumably a smoker?):

“They are very serious about putting photos on the cigarette boxes. OK, may God help them. But why don’t they respect the society with whom they are dealing?” wrote Mohammed Mustafa Shirdi, a member of Egypt’s National Assembly, in Al Wafd newspaper last week. “You made a joke of us. Change this photo at once.”

“It’s a shame on the ministry of health to bring out this explicit sexual suggestion. And if, I’m sorry, your problem is flaccid things, there are medicines of the kind that will ‘raise your head, my brother’,” wrote Mr Shirdi, alluding to a well-known 1950s-era patriotic slogan.

 Iran launched a research rocket into space with some unusual passengers on board: a mouse, two turtles and some worms, Iranian state media and wire services reported Wednesday.

"Iranian scientists capable to conquer skies," read the headline in the English version of IRNA, a state-run news service. That was a quote from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who announced the space project and unveiled some Iranian-made satellites and the model for a light booster rocket. The occasion was Iran's National Space Technology Day, according to IRNA.

The AP version of the story quotes a Western defense analyst as suggesting the animals-in-space stunt was more a vanity project than serious scientific research. Monkeys, not worms or turtles, would be the obvious choice for a test on human life-support systems in spacecraft, the analyst said.

"Worms in space serve no purpose," the analyst, James Lewis of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, told AP.

Iran would beg to differ.

"Lauding the self-belief and self-sufficiency of the Iranian researchers and scientists, (Ahmadinejad) announced that many parts of the space satellites are fully produced inside the country. He remarked that Iran's space achievements can be considered as good lessons for other nations," IRNA wrote.

As the AP story points out, Western powers watch such launches very closely because of fears that the same technology used to launch satellites and research capsules could be borrowed for intercontinental long-range missiles.

(Photo credit: IRNA)

Militants launched another IRAM attack against a joint U.S.-Iraqi compound in the southern Iraqi city of Amarah, near the Iranian border, according to the U.S. military. No one was injured.

A couple weeks ago, I wrote a story about the reappearance of the IRAM, or Improvised Rocket-Assisted Munition, a rarely used weapon that U.S. intellligence officials say is connected to Iran.

Sometimes called "flying IEDs," IRAMs are a potentially deadlier incarnation of the garden-variety IEDs in Iraq and Afghanistan — they're short-range projectiles that catapult toward unsuspecting targets.

In the latest incident, militants on Saturday launched three IRAMs toward Camp Sparrowhawk, a joint Iraqi-American base in Amarah, according to a U.S. military statement with few details of the attack. Most IRAM information is classified as the U.S. military studies the device's components and origins.

There were no casualties and no major equipment damage. Lucky for them, because if you want to know what an IRAM can do, just listen to this American soldier who survived one and was awarded the Purple Heart.

His full account is included in my IRAM story from last month, which you can read here.

"I'd never heard of it — not before it blew up on us," said Spc. Robert B. Walsh, 27, of Venice, Fla., who survived an IRAM blast last summer at the same place as the latest attack.

Walsh, who's still in Iraq, said he was on duty in a guard tower on the American side of the joint outpost at 6 a.m. last June 30, which was supposed to have been a day of celebration as the new U.S.-Iraqi security pact took effect.

Walsh said his only clue before the blast was "a poof sound." In the seconds before impact, Walsh used his radio to alert other soldiers to possible incoming fire.

The IRAM zipped over the wall "like a big bottle rocket," Walsh said. It passed his guard tower and blew up next to a kitchen and barracks where American troops were sleeping.

Two other Purple Heart recipients suffered shrapnel wounds when windows and doors blew into their quarters, cutting their faces and hands. Several vehicles were damaged or destroyed, and the force of the explosion cracked the foundation and shifted the roof of the concrete building.

"It threw me about three or four feet and knocked me unconscious," Walsh said. "When I woke up, everything was on fire and there was debris all over the ground. It left a hole with a 15-foot radius, and it was 4 1/2 feet deep."

Hungry?

In Egypt, you can tuck into a Viagra Sandwich, which is just the local vernacular for a bunch of seafood stuffed into a bun.

I keep forgetting about this amusing little cultural phenomenon, and then I pick up a menu and read: fresh salad, soup of the day, Viagra Sandwich.

It's a slow news day here (I'm covering a bellydancers' convention. Enough said.) so I decided to browse the Web and find out more about the Viagra Sandwich.

The anthropology blog Culture Matters had a post in 2008 that summed up the Egyptian national obsession with the relationship between food and male virility:

This takes traditional notions of the virility-enhancing power of seafood and rebrands it with the notoriety of a global pharmaceutical product. By the way, it seemed that every other restaurant in Cairo has some “Viagra” dish. At the annual date market, one variety of dates usually gets called “Viagra” for the same reason.

On a British travel Web site, a reviewer recommended the sandwich and then felt compelled to warn: "It's not something that will give you stimulating effect." Darn, the cheeseburger it is then.

The Egyptian fast-food chain Cook Door is probably the most notable one with Viagra Sandwiches. In fact, the menu offers it as Fried Viagra (pictured above) or Grilled Viagra, which is advertised, typos and all, like this: "grilled shrimps grilled crab blended to perfection with our secret sauce it's a real strong sandwich."

Besides, it might be safer than handling the real thing. Earlier this month, the shooting of an Egyptian soldier at the border with Gaza pitted Hamas against Mubarak's government. Hamas said the shooting was Egyptian friendly fire. Egypt's state media blamed Palestinians and quoted a prominent pro-government editor as saying, "We were surprised that the Gazan candidates turned into a gang that rules with metal and fire, benefiting from the smuggling of drugs, Viagra and food."