News stories by Omid Memarian, page 3

It might be hard to imagine that a woman's attendance at a university would be contingent upon the way she dresses.

While the Iranian government has intensified its aggressive efforts to expand Internet filters, Austin Heap, a young programmer in the U.S., says he has developed software that would enable Iranians to evade their censors.

International human rights groups and Iranian activists say Iran's decision to reject major recommendations made by the 47-member U.N. Human Rights Council on Wednesday is disappointing and signals that Tehran has no intention of easing the crackdown on dissent in the country.

Six months after Iranian authorities arrested three U.S. citizens who mistakenly crossed the unmarked border between Iran and Iraq, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said that Iran could be willing to exchange them for Iranians imprisoned in the United States.

News that Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps is withdrawing a billion dollars from the country's Foreign Reserve Fund in order to complete Phases 15 and 16 of the gigantic South Pars gas project has generated concern among Iranian analysts, who believe the move reveals the military organisation's excessive power over Iran's economy.

Just a few months after a right-wing government gained power in Israel, Iran's hardliner president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was declared the winner in Friday's election, although his main rival has not accepted defeat and reformist supporters were skirmishing with security forces in the capital Tehran Saturday.

Fears that the state apparatus controlled by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is laying the groundwork for possible fraud in Friday’s presidential election appear to be growing among his two reformist challengers and their supporters.

In a case that human rights activists say echoes that of recently released journalist Roxana Saberi, the Iranian government has imprisoned a woman employed by a U.S.-based non-profit organisation working to improve child and maternal health in the country, alleging that she acted as a spy for the United States.

Since Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi was sentenced to eight years in prison last week on the charge of spying for foreign governments, human rights and press freedom groups have become increasingly critical of the political nature of her case and the harsh and unprecedented penalty.

The appointment of Dennis Ross as a special advisor to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has found a cool reaction in Tehran and some U.S. policy circles.