Meet the new boss

Memories:

A former Jordanian minister has told The New Yorker magazine a US official confirmed to him that Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi executed six suspected insurgents at a Baghdad police station last year.

The claim comes in a profile of Mr Allawi written for this week's edition of the magazine by journalist Jon Lee Anderson, the author of The Fall of Baghdad and a regular Baghdad correspondent for The New Yorker.

Writing about his research in Jordan in December, Anderson says: "A well-known former government minister told me that an American official had confirmed that the killings took place, saying to him, 'What a mess we're in - we got rid of one son of a bitch only to get another one'."