Tehran - Iran's embattled opposition leaders accused the government of becoming more brutal than the shah's regime in Web statements Saturday, and authorities announced a new Internet crackdown aimed at choking off the reform movement's last real means of keeping its campaign alive. » Read more on google.com mehr...

The 26th branch of the Revolutionary Court in Tehran sentenced Hessam Salamat, a master's student at Tehran University, to 4 years in prison. Salamat was among the large group of activists arrested after the presidential election. » Read more on persian2english.wordpress.com mehr...

New Delhi - House of Saddam gets Emmy for Shohreh Aghdashloo. House of Saddam is a 2008 drama that charts the rise and fall of Saddam Hussein. A co-production between BBC Television and HBO films, the series was first broadcast on BBC Two (in the United Kingdom) in four parts between 30 July and 20 August 2008. » Read more on khabrein.info mehr...

First there was Neda. Then there was Sohrab. Now there is Taraneh. The names and stories of the Iranians who have been brutalized or killed in the aftermath of the post-election protests are gradually seeping into a memorial vault of the faces of suffering and endurance in the name of sociopolitical reform. » Read more on huffingtonpost.com mehr...

The mobile phone company Nokia is being hit by a growing economic boycott in Iran as consumers sympathetic to the post-election protest movement begin targeting a string of companies deemed to be collaborating with the regime. » More on guardian.co.uk mehr...

Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the pragmatic-conservative Iranian politician, head of Iran's Expediency Council and former president of Iran, will lead Friday prayers in Tehran on July 17, according to Mir-Hossain Mousavi's Facebook page. » More on wikinews.org mehr...

The Austrian capital is set to unveil a pavilion featuring the statues of four prominent Iranian figures in front of the United Nations Office. Highlighting the Iranian architectural features, the pavilion is adorned with Persian art forms and includes the statues of renowned Iranian scientists Avicenna, Abu Rayhan Birouni, Zakariya Razi (Rhazes) and Omar Khayyam. » Lesen Sie weiter auf presstv.com mehr...

In 2003, administrators at Stanford University's Electrical Engineering Department were startled when a group of foreign students aced the notoriously difficult Ph.D. entrance exam, getting some of the highest scores ever. That the whiz kids weren't American wasn't odd; students from Asia and elsewhere excel in U.S. programs. The surprising thing, say Stanford administrators, is that the majority came from one country and one school: Sharif University of Science and Technology in Iran. » Read more on newsweek.com (pi) mehr...

Yasaman Farzan of Institute for Studies in Theoretical Physics and Mathematics (IPM) has received the prestigious IUPAP Young Scientist Prize in Particle Physics. The International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) has chosen Dr Yasaman Farzan of IPM as the winner of the IUPAP Young Scientist Prize in Particle Physics in 2008. This prize which is a recently established one, will be awarded every two years in the field of particle physics, preferentially one to a theoretical and one to an experimental young particle physicist of outstanding scientific achievements. The 2008 prize is the first IUPAP prize in the field of particle physics. Yasaman Farzan is the winner of the theoretical IUPAP prize. mehr...

Tehran - The Iran Khodro Powertrain Company (IPCO) will unveil its most advanced dual-mode hybrid engine, the National Engine, on the first day of Engine Expo 2008, which is being held in Stuttgart, Germany from May 6 to 8. IPCO Managing Director Mohammad Zali announced that the National Engine, which runs on both natural gas and gasoline, was designed and produced three years ago in Iran and now has the ability to compete with other modern engines since it observes the Euro 4 standard for air pollution. » Read more on tehrantimes.com (pi) mehr...

ONE of the founding fathers of neoconservatism has privately urged President George W Bush to bomb Iran rather than allow it to acquire nuclear weapons. Norman Podhoretz, an intellectual guru of the neoconservative movement who has joined Rudolph Giuliani’s 2008 presidential campaign as a senior foreign policy adviser, held an unpublicised meeting with Bush late last spring at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York. The encounter reveals the enduring influence of the neoconservatives at the highest reaches of the White House, despite some high-profile casualties in the past year. mehr...

A RESPECTED American paper posted a scoop this week: Vice-President Dick Cheney, the King of Hawks, has thought up a Machiavellian scheme for an attack on Iran. Its main point: Israel will start by bombing an Iranian nuclear installation, Iran will respond by launching missiles at Israel, and this will serve as a pretext for an American attack on Iran. mehr...

The Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians’ military capability in three days, according to a national security expert. Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center, said last week that US military planners were not preparing for “pinprick strikes” against Iran’s nuclear facilities. “They’re about taking out the entire Iranian military,” he said. mehr...

“While in Berlin, Levey met with Thomas Mirow, a senior official at the Finance Ministry, and Chancellor Angela Merkel's foreign policy advisor Christoph Heusgen. During those talks, he demanded Germany cut its so-called Hermes export credit insurance coverage when it came to deals with Iran. (...) Moreover, Levey told the officials that Washington wanted Germany to scale back all of its other economic ties with Iran as quickly as possible. But Levey ran into resistance from the Germans, who said his demands were understandable coming from a country that has no trade with Iran. Germany, however, exports more than €4 billion ($5.45 billion) in goods to the country each year, creating thousands of jobs.” (Spiegel online, “US Pressures Germany to Cut Iran Business Ties”, No. 31/ July 30, 2007) mehr...

TEHRAN (Thomson Financial) - Iran will launch the first phase of a long-awaited plan to ration petrol on Thursday - a move that is expected to have a major impact on its economy, officials said. The plan, which aims to reduce colossal state petrol subsidies, is being implemented gradually and Thursday's change will only affect vehicles used by government officials, with private cars being targeted later. 'The start of (the) first phase of petrol rationing is only for the government vehicles and will begin from midnight on Wednesday,' the head of government special plans, Ali Akbar Mehrabian, was quoted as saying by the state news agency IRNA. mehr...