In Tehran it's the third day of street demonstrations. The BBC's Marcus George is there, reporting under restrictions: journalists are not allowed to cover what are called 'unauthorised gatherings' or move around freely in Tehran. But there are no controls over what he can say. He joins us with his story.

Iran’s Guardian Council today says it is recounting the votes in last Friday’s deeply divisive elections. Meanwhile, the government has said it will shut down reporting from the country. To discuss how Iranian-Americans are trying to track the news from their homeland, The Takeaway is joined by Hadi Guyemi, spokesperson for the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran; he is also a former Human Rights Watch worker.

Here's a real-time update of what people on Twitter are saying about Iran.

Surfers in the Midwest are cheering this week because of a change to a Chicago law that makes it possible to take surfboards on the city's beaches. The Takeaway talks to surfer Vince Deur who co-chairs the Great Lakes chapter of the Surfrider Foundation.

Watch this video about Great Lakes surfing.

The Obama administration has created, by one count, 21 "czars"—a pay czar, a car czar, a health reform czar, an urban czar. Joining The Takeaway is Shirley Anne Warshaw, presidential scholar and author of “The Co-Presidency of Bush and Cheney”; she explains what this proliferation says about President Obama's leadership style.

It has deep red flesh. It measures more than six feet high. It blooms only about once a decade. But the most memorable thing about the "Corpse Flower" at the Huntington Botanical Garden is that it gives off the stench of rotting flesh. The Takeaway is joined by Garden Director Jim Folsom, who's in San Marino, California, with the flower, Amorphophallus titanium.

Watch the crowds gather around a blooming corpse flower in this time-lapse video.

The motto of the Los Angeles Police Department is "To protect and serve," but the LAPD hasn't always delivered. The most famous example is the Rodney King beating in 1991, which provoked widespread rioting. Endemic problems with the department led to federal oversight. Now the LAPD says it has served its time, dealt with its problems, and that it's time to end the oversight.

The Takeaway is joined by Mark Rosenbaum, the Legal Director of the ACLU of Southern California and one of lawyers in Federal court seeking to extend the consent decree involving the LAPD. Also joining The Takeaway is Chris Stone, Criminal Justice Professor at Harvard University who wrote a nine-month study of the LAPD that came out last month.

Yesterday the Congressional Budget Office passed judgment on one of the key bills overhauling the health insurance system. Here with a look at who might get insurance, who won't and what it'll cost is Todd Zwillich, The Takeaway's Washington Correspondent.

Thousands of people across Iranian society poured into the streets yesterday to protest what they charge were fraudulent results in last week’s presidential vote. These were the largest demonstrations since the 1979 revolution. For the latest in the situation on the streets, The Takeaway talks to Babak Dehghanpisheh, the Middle East Correspondent for Newsweek, who is in Tehran.

President Obama put healthcare front and center yesterday in a talk to doctors. Last year, the U.S. spent $2.4 trillion on healthcare. Some doctors are trying to shrink costs while boosting the quality of care in a method called "micropractices." Joining The Takeaway to talk about this trend is John Wasson. He is a geriatrician and a Professor of Community and Family Medicine at Dartmouth Medical School. Also joining the discussion is Dr. Moitri Savard, a Family Physician who runs a micropractice in Queens, New York.

Brazil, Russia, India and China sometimes referred to as the BRIC group, meet today to work out how to exert more control over the global financial system. On their agenda is how to create a new currency that could replace the U.S. dollar. Clifford Levy, New York Times Moscow Bureau Chief, joins the Takeaway to talk about this plan and what it will mean for the American economy.

The Iran election results showed a landslide victory for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad—and sparked Tehran's worst violence in 10 years.The spokesman for Iran's Guardian Council says it is ready to do a recount of specific ballot boxes where candidates say irregularities occurred. Jonathan Marcus, Diplomatic Correspondent for the BBC, is in Tehran to explain the ongoing crisis.

View footage from the streets of Tehran in the video below.

The 2016 Olympics are already heating up. Seven candidates — baseball, golf, karate, roller sports, rugby sevens, softball and squash — are vying for a place at the games from 2016 onward. To find out how the process is going, The Takeaway is joined by Don Porter, the President of the Softball Federation, who is in Lausanne, Switzerland, to pitch his sport to the IOC. Also joining the discussion is Dave Zirin, sportswriter for The Nation and author of People's History of Sports in the United States, for his take on the Olympics.

The foreclosure crisis is not just about subprime mortgages anymore. Because of job losses and rising health care costs, homeowners who were once able to keep up with their payments are beginning to fall behind. Shannon Riggs, a homeowner from Norfolk, Virginia, who almost lost her home after her husband lost his job, tells The Takeaway her story. And Anya Kamenetz, Staff Writer for Fast Company magazine and author of “Generation Debt,” will look at what options homeowners have, and how the Obama administration can better address the problem.

Tonight is the last night that Jay Leno will man the legendary Late Night desk. He is moving to prime time, with a live comedy show five nights a week at 10:00 p.m. Leno fans will be happy -- and everybody else can read or get some extra sleep. What will you do with your late night?

Some of Leno's best bloopers:

Global health officials are warning that H1N1 swine flu could bloom into a pandemic. Yesterday, the World Health Organization declared a Phase Five alert. Epidemiologist and virus hunter Nathan Wolfe, of the Global Viral Forecasting Initiative, says it never should have gotten to this point. In an op-ed in today's New York Times, Wolfe argues that if global public health functioned differently, we probably could have detected the virus before it spread so widely.

Still unsure of how to spot swine flu? This video from the Centers for Disease Control explains the symptoms.

Stage three of India's five-stage, month-long election takes place Thursday. BBC India correspondent Tinku Ray reports from Mumbai on BBC's "Elections Train," which has been traveling across the world's largest democratic nation.

And, you can follow the train's journey on an interactive map on the BBC's Web site, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8000645.stm and follow the BBC's Indian election coverage at http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/indiaelection09/.

For footage from India's election watch the video below.

The AIG bonus scandal stirred intense anger from the public, the media and the president. Swiss bank Credit Suisse has adopted a creative solution to the bonus paying problem — pay part of employees bonuses in "toxic assets," those repackaged bad loans that are at the center of our economic downturn. Jesse Eisinger, a financial writer who has worked at the Wall Street Journal and Condé Nast Portfolio, explains.

Click through for a transcript.

The French government is on the verge of passing a law that would punish Web users for downloading illegal content. Pushed by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the bill proposes that after your third violation you will be banned from the Internet for a year. Some argue that this would violate our fundamental human rights. That's right, the Internet as a fundamental human right. Siva Vaidhyanathan, an associate professor of Media Studies and Law at the University of Virginia, joins The Takeaway.

President Barack Obama marked his first 100 days in office last night with a prime-time news conference. It was the third of Obama's presidency, and the first not dominated by the recession. Jay Newton-Small, Washington reporter for Time Magazine, joins The Takeaway to analyze the press conference.

The World Health Organization has raised its pandemic threat level to Phase Five. What does that mean? The BBC's Matt McGrath explains the connection between the threat level and international caution.

Click through for a transcript.