Mr. Arafat, a Nobel Peace laureate and career terrorist, appears poised to handily set a new world record in coma depth:

The condition of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat deteriorated overnight and he is now in a deeper coma, [Christian Estripeau,] the spokesman for the French army medical service said Tuesday.

"This marks a significant step towards a development whose prognosis is doubtful," he said.

Hhmmm, the prognosis for the dead is rarely in doubt. Dead today. More death ahead.

Palestinian President Yasser Arafat was very ill but his brain, heart and lungs were still functioning, Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath said.

These three vital organs are valiantly trying to rally the moribund less-than-vital Arafat organs and associated tissues.

Mr. Arafat is taking up space at the l'hôpital militaire Percy de Clamart. Earlier he threw an impromptu state dinner of yellow Jell-O and chocolate pudding packs for visiting well-wisher Jack Chirac, the president of France. Somehow the conversation drifted to the renowned French entertainer, Joseph Pujol, who Jack said he much admired. ("Telle maîtrise ! Telle musique !") Mr. Arafat -- speaking through a ventriloquist -- let it be known he too had blown away a few audiences in his time and immediately let loose with "a series of noisome mephitic blasts that drove the unsuspecting Frenchman into the hall, gagging."

But all that fun was before Mr. Arafat commenced his coma-diving, which has people really concerned. Well, confused:

The flurry of conflicting reports [scil., unhealthy dead vs. lively coma] surfaced during a visit to Paris by a delegation of three senior Palestinian officials, all seen as potential successors to Arafat, to check on the Palestinian leader despite his wife's angry objections.

Arafat's wife, Suha, had accused the three leaders [scil., Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie, Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath, and Palestine Liberation Organization Secretary General Mahmoud Abbas] of wanting to "bury him alive," a scathing attack that drew sharp criticism from officials and ordinary Palestinians alike.

Mrs. Arafat is perceived as too French by petty complaining Palestinians who cannot afford to live in Paris on £53,000 a month from the PNA coffers. (How can anyone be too French? It's like saying so-and-so is too self-admiring or too delightfully pig-headed or too off-putting! Too French! What's next? Too meretricious?):

On Suha Arafat's old street, al-Mahkakim, in Ramallah, there's not much doubt about what lies behind the unseemly tussle between the wife of Palestinian leader and the men poised to replace him.

"The most important part of it is money," said Manel Shami, who grew up on the same block of the middle-class largely Christian neighbourhood as the future Palestinian first lady and knew her well. "Suha was never interested in politics."

That is a common enough view in Ramallah, where the woman with dyed-blond hair, haute couture suits and an apparent penchant for an expensive lifestyle is seen above all as having betrayed her husband by having decamped to Paris at the beginning of the intifada.

But money is clearly on Mrs Arafat's mind, because among those she has feuded with in Paris over the past week is Mohammed Rashid, her husband's financial manager, who is one of the few men who knows where the secret bank accounts are held. Even fewer people know how much they contain, but estimates range from the hundreds of millions to more than £1bn.

Feel the love.

Strap him in a wheelchair, put a bullet in his head, and dump him in the Adriatic.

Only if we could revive him first. I wouldn't want him to miss it.

Strap him in a wheelchair, put a bullet in his head, and dump him in the Adriatic.

Nice geographic quote (blow-hard is probably scratching his head over that one) but wouldn't the Seine, the Atlantic or the Meditenarean, be nearer?

but wouldn't the Seine, the Atlantic or the Meditenarean, be nearer?

Uh Zoomer, it went over your head that they were referring to the Palestinian terrorist murder of Leon Klinghoffer, thrown overboard in his wheelchair in the Adriatic.. so therefore the Seine, Atlantic, etc would not apply. One thing is for sure, nobody's gonna mistake you for being the sharpest knife in the drawer