Already known for his paranoid conspiracy theories, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hasn't had any problem finding new ones. The latest: Abolfazl Zohrehvand, Iran's ambassador to Italy, claims that Western agents attempted to assassinate the Iranian president by using radiation poisoning during his recent trip to Rome:

One day before Ahmadinejad's trip, I checked and found out that the X-ray machine set up in the place where he was staying gave off excessive radiation," Mr Zohrehvand said. "First we suspected the machine was broken and after replacing it with another one it turned out that the radiation was controlled from another source.

"When the president entered this place, the radiation increased and exceeded '1,000' so that the intensity of the radiation was completely felt inside the building."