Anwar Hussein/Landov

They fought wars, thrived in a male-dominated political world, and faced controversy at home. Bruce Riedel on the kinship between Margaret Thatcher and Indira Gandhi.

Americans are making much of the partnership between President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher following her death last week, but the baroness's real soul mate was another Iron Lady, Prime Minister Indira Nehru Gandhi.The two prime ministers were both polarizing figures in their own countries who left behind very controversial legacies. They first meet in September 1976 when Thatcher visited India as head of the Conservative Party.

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In the wake of the Boston bombings, British authorities are reassessing security arrangements for this weekend’s race.

The London Marathon will go ahead this Sunday despite the devastating bomb blasts in Boston that left three dead, including an 8-year-old boy, and injured 140 others, but organizers of the British run, who expressed shock at the terrorist violence and sympathy with the city of Boston, say they are reviewing security arrangements.Within hours of the bombing they insisted they would not cancel the London event, which attracts about 36,000 runners from around the world, arguing that to hold the run, one of the world’s foremost marathons, is the best way to show solidarity with Boston and to send a defiant message to those responsible for the bombing.

Bodo Marks/dpa/Corbis

A pianist in Turkey has been convicted of insulting Islam because of statements he made on Twitter. Mike Giglio on the country’s changing limitations on freedom of expression.

In Turkey, the sensitive subject of freedom of expression has an unlikely new face: Fazil Say, a world-renowned pianist who was convicted of insulting Islam on Monday.Say, who has performed with the New York Philharmonic and is currently touring in Germany, received a 10-month suspended sentence, meaning he won’t go to jail unless he re-offends. But his case has provided a stark reminder of how far-reaching Turkey’s laws governing speech and expression can be.

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Once again, the media slobbered over the latest Julian Assange “revelation” of already-public documents, while another much more important investigation based on true reporting was largely ignored. Michael Moynihan on how the WikiLeaks founder keeps journalists dancing to his tune—and why it demonstrates a worrisome trend.

Last week an organization run by a crusading Australian journalist, working in concert with mainstream media outlets like The Guardian and The Washington Post, facilitated a series of blockbuster stories based on 2 million leaked documents—an astonishing 200 gigabytes of data—detailing the secret offshore holdings of the ultra-rich.The revelations were presented with minimal drama: no impassioned press conferences, no suggestions of dark conspiracies, and not a bottle-blonde megalomaniac in sight.

Tomas Bravo/Reuters, via Landov

Hugo Chávez lives! Well, sort of. Chávez’s handpicked successor, Nicolás Maduro, eked out the Venezuelan presidential election by 235,000 votes. Mac Margolis on why the opposition suspects foul play.

For its high drama and nerve-shattering political suspense, it was an election Hugo Chávez himself might have appreciated. After a bitterly fought campaign in a deeply divided country, the race to replace the late leader of Venezuela’s so-called Bolívarian revolution came down to a vote-by-vote tally that stretched into the small hours of this morning—ending in a decision that is likely to be talked about for years to come.Only the result—a razor-thin 50.

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Fifty years ago, summer 1963. London is swinging, and the old guard is barely holding on. And then the Profumo affair begins ...

She sits astride a knockoff copy of a plywood Arne Jacobsen chair, the chair reversed so that its kidney-shaped back provides just enough modesty to the axis of her nakedness. Her elbows rest on the chair back; her forearms cover her breasts, her chin in her cupped hands. She stares with impudence at the camera. She is young, but there is a little coarseness to her as she plays the vamp; she has been groomed in a hurry for the role.“Lucky chair,” says someone.

Tim Hetherington/Magnum (photo by James Brabazon)

A new documentary explores the life, and death, of Tim Hetherington.

Sebastian Junger’s film Which Way Is the Front Line From Here? is ostensibly a documentary portrait of Junger’s friend and collaborator, photojournalist Tim Hetherington, who was killed while covering the fighting in Libya two years ago.But Which Way has a wider lens than that. Returning to a theme he has explored on camera and in writing before, Junger essentially poses the question: What is it about war that exerts such a mesmeric pull? Why do some people run toward combat rather than away from it?And this shapes the prologue to the documentary with Hetherington himself trying to answer that question: Why is he drawn to documenting the experience of war?“What’s interesting about war is there are all sorts of generalizations made up about it.

Bobby Yip/Reuters

Why everyone gets North Korea dangerously wrong.

Kim Jong-un did us a small favor by appointing an economic reformer to the country’s premiership on April 1, right in the middle of the Great Saber Rattle. We have thus been spared the naive op-ed pieces—welcoming the positive “trend,” calling on Washington to reward it, etc.—that would have ensued had Pak Pong-ju’s appointment come during a lull in tensions. Of course, Pyongyang watchers will find another reason for optimism soon enough. They began predicting great change about five years ago, when it became known that Kim Jong-un had lived in Switzerland.

Illustration by Alex Robbins

The most important man in Pakistan.

It’s a difficult task, and many fear that Fakhruddin Ghulam Ebrahim, Pakistan’s chief election commissioner since July, may not be the right man for it. Given his age—he’s 85—and the activist Supreme Court’s deep involvement in the election process, can Ebrahim ensure that his country’s first-ever transition from one fully civilian elected government to another takes place smoothly? Elections for the national and four provincial assemblies are scheduled for May 11.