Rooyesh

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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Thousands of Iranian women have been cautioned over their poor Islamic dress this week and several hundred arrested in the capital Tehran in the most fierce crackdown on what’s known as “bad hijab” for more than a decade. It is the talk of the town. The latest police crackdown on Islamic dress has angered many Iranians - male, female, young and old.

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Administration claims that Iran has been supplying arms to Iraq’s Sunni insurgency have never made any sense. Coming soon after Washington initially accused Tehran of arming Shi’ite militias, they have seemed like a weak attempt to remake its case tying the country to attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq — the vast majority of which are carried out by Sunni, not Shi’a, forces.

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Was Tehran Behind an Iraq Raid?

The number of people executed in Iran, Iraq, Sudan and Pakistan rose in 2006 as those countries bucked an overall trend towards fewer executions, a report said today. In its annual report on the death penalty, the human rights group Amnesty International said at least 1,591 people were executed last year, down from 2,148 the year before. “Last year saw a slight drop in execution numbers - but it was another grim death toll around the world and we are particularly concerned about a disturbing ‘revival’ of executions in countries like Iraq, Sudan and Pakistan,” Kate Allen, the director of Amnesty International UK, said.

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Performing Monday night at Fat Baby bar on the Lower East Side, the four members of Hypernova almost made it through their set before distinguishing themselves from the many other hip and hungry young talents who come to New York seeking musical recognition. “We have no idea how good or bad we are — we’ve just been playing in Iran,” blurted out Raam, the group’s 25-year-old songwriter and frontman, to howls of encouragement from an audience of about 30 people stacked with Iranian-American friends and supporters. Nonchalance is a hard act to master.

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After months of confusion over the fate of a former Revolutionary Guard commander missing since December, friends and former officials in Tehran are concluding that he has defected to foreign intelligence services. They told the Financial Times that Ali-Reza Asgari, 46, was frustrated and angry after spending about 18 months in jail between 2003 and 2005 on charges of espionage and corruption.

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For months, the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush has resisted the idea of holding talks with Iran and Syria, which he accuses of mischief in the Middle East, particularly in Iraq. But this week, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, urged Iran and Syria to attend next week’s talks on stabilizing Iraq. The meetings will be held on May 3 and 4 in the Egyptian resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh.

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A U.S.-based human rights group has criticized Iran for imposing lengthy jail sentences on six women activists. In a statement Thursday, Human Rights Watch is appealing to the head of Iran’s judiciary, Ayatollah Mahmud Hashemi Shahrudi to immediately overturn the convictions and in the group’s words, “end the persecution of all such human rights defenders.”

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Women in Islamic nations are increasingly being heard, seen and listened to, thanks in part to leading female voices determined to make a difference, despite challenges ranging from motherhood to threats on their lives. In New York, Mona Ghuneim spoke with some successful female media figures from the Middle East who are paving the way for young women today. One of the hostesses of a popular Saudi program called “Speaking Softly” says that until recently, she did not see people like herself on television.

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Iran has overruled critics and started filling a new dam in the parched south of the country that will drown an ancient archaeological site and could threaten the tomb of Cyrus the Great. Thousands of activists have rallied and petitioned the government not to flood the dam, which is only seven kilometres (four miles) from Pasargadae — the first capital of the Persian Empire.

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