As predicted, it's out with the fundamentalist MMA and in with the secular Pashtun nationalist Awami National Party (ANP) in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province. But can the Taliban and al Qaeda-led militancy in the area be rolled back?

I've been revisiting some old Larry Sanders Show episodes. There's one called What Have You Done For Me Lately?, in which talk show host Larry is asked by the network to do a live commercial to pimp the Garden Weasel.

It isn't going well.

Here's an exchange between Gary Shandling's character Larry and Hank Kingsley, played by the great Jeffrey Tambor:

From the Guardian:

For the viewers of Turkmenistan's popular nightly news programme, Vatan, it was another routine bulletin. But as the newsreader began the 9pm broadcast, viewers across the central Asian country spotted something unusual crawling across the studio table: a large brown cockroach.

The cockroach managed to complete a whole lap of the desk, apparently undetected, before disappearing. The programme, complete with cockroach, was repeated at 11pm that night.

It was only at 9am the following day that horrified officials from Turkmenistan's ministry of culture discovered the cockroach's guest appearance. And that, perhaps, should have been the end of the matter, the mildly entertaining footage being consigned to the occasional airing by the Turkmenistan equivalent of Denis Norden on a telly bloopers show.

But the consequences of this particular cockroach's impromptu five minutes of fame were immediate and severe.

The country's president, Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, took news of the insect so badly that he responded by firing no fewer than 30 workers from the main state TV channel, the news website Kronika Turkmenistan reported yesterday.

The story went on to say that Berdynukhamedov isn't the only president to have fired TV people. His immediate predecessor, Saparmurat Niyazov -- the Turkmenbashi, or father of all the Turkmen -- sacked a bunch after drunken technicians forgot to broadcast his New Year's Eve message one year.

Saw some guy at a bank ATM today. He lowered his face right down to the keyboard and then wrapped right arm around his head. He then snuck his left hand in to enter his PIN number.

So, anyone think this guy's learned a hard lesson about protecting one's PIN number at some point in his life? :^)