AFP: Iran is trying to replicate Nazi Germany's treatment of the Jewish people, Israeli deputy prime minister Silvan Shalom said Tuesday ahead of a Holocaust ceremony at a former death camp.

New York Times: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran on Monday used the platform of a United Nations conference in Geneva on combating racism to disparage Israel as a “cruel and repressive racist regime,” prompting delegates from European nations to desert the hall and earning a rare harsh rebuke from Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

Bloomberg: North Korea and Iran are holding three U.S. reporters as “political hostages” to strengthen their position in negotiations with the Obama administration, the International Press Institute said.

AP: Hometown friends and colleagues of an American journalist imprisoned in Iran for espionage maintain that she's a political pawn and not a spy — though a local newspaper editor hesitates to declare her innocent without seeing the evidence.

The Guardian: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's comment that Israel came into existence "under the pretext of Jewish suffering" may sound unremarkable to Arabs and Muslims who are focused on the current suffering of the Palestinians. But it will outrage most Israelis, Jews – and many others – who see a direct link between the Nazi Holocaust and the creation of the state in 1948.

AFP: Prime Minister Gordon Brown "unreservedly condemned" the "offensive" comments made by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the UN racism conference Monday, his spokesman said.

Reuters: Diplomats streamed out of a United Nations conference on racism Monday after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Israel had occupied Palestinian land on "the pretext of Jewish suffering."

AP: U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon has condemned Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for his tirade against Israel during a global racism conference.