Rooyesh

Move over, Bono. A budding Canadian pop singer inspired in part by the U2 rock star is setting out to save the world, and has scored an early success by leading an international campaign to free an Iranian teeage girl from a date with the hangman. Nazanin Fatehi killed a would-be rapist in 2005 and was sentenced to death for premeditated murder. She would have joined about two-dozen other youngsters executed in the Islamic republic since 1990, according to Amnesty International, were it not for Nazanin Afshin-Jam, a Canadian singer born in Iran.

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It is hard to imagine a tougher cause in Iran than campaigning against the death penalty, which has strong popular support and which most religious authorities and politicians say is required by Islam. Yet that is the task Emadeddine Baghi, a former journalist, has set himself in establishing a non-governmental organisation called the Association for the Right to Life. “I have to admit some people I asked to support us, including well-known reformers, refused point blank,” he says.

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The top EU foreign policy official urged the United States Friday to engage Iran in direct negotiations about its nuclear program and other issues to try to stabilize the Middle East. Javier Solana, the EU’s foreign and security affairs chief, told an annual trans-Atlantic security conference he came away from two days of talks in Ankara with Iran’s top nuclear negotiator this week believing that Ali Khameini, Iran’s spiritual leader, was ready for direct talks with Washington.

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