Iran Focus

AP: Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva offered on Saturday to provide refuge to a woman who has been sentenced to death in Iran following her conviction for committing adultery.

AFP: The case of three US hikers held in Tehran is not linked to that of an Iranian nuclear scientist who returned from the United States, an Iranian official said Saturday on the one-year anniversary of their detention.

AP: Two strong earthquakes shook different parts of Iran in less than 24 hours, injuring more than 200 people and damaging hundreds of homes, Iranian media reported Saturday.

AFP: Iran's main economic partner China has invested around 40 billion dollars in the Islamic republic's oil and gas sector, a senior Iranian official said on Saturday.

AFP: An Iranian woman sentenced to death by stoning for adultery in Iran pleaded to be allowed to hug her children, in a letter attributed to her released by human rights activists in London on Saturday.

AFP: President Barack Obama called on Iran Friday to "immediately release" three American hikers being held by the Islamic republic, saying they had never worked for the US government and committed "absolutely no crime."

Bloomberg: Canadian Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon said Iran is “hiding” the truth about its nuclear program and added that the effectiveness of new sanctions will be reviewed by Group of Eight officials when they next meet in September.

Fox News: Two multinational corporations that have earned millions of dollars in U.S. government contracts  are conducting business with Iran in violation of the recently signed sanctions law, according to an Iran watchdog group that has provided its research to FoxNews.com.

AFP: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the mothers of three young US nationals detained without charge in Iran for 12 months renewed appeals Friday for the trio's release.

UPI: A working group from Iran has left for neighboring Iraq to discuss a possible natural gas transit deal, Iran's deputy oil minister said.

AFP: The lack of a government in Iraq nearly five months after general elections is "embarrassing" and is impeding any long-term decision-making, Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told AFP on Thursday.

Washington Post: President Ahmadinejad has a penchant for the somewhat loony, as when last weekend he denounced Paul the Octopus, omniscient predictor of eight consecutive World Cup matches, as a symbol of decadence and purveyor of "Western propaganda and superstition."

AFP: Iran said on Friday it was ready for immediate talks with the United States, Russia and France over an exchange of nuclear fuel and added that it was also against stockpiling higher enriched uranium.

Wall Street Journal Europe: In 2007, U.S. intelligence said Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program. Analyst policy bias and disinformation from Iranian double agents may explain the mistake.

Bloomberg: Iran Air, the state-owned flag carrier, plans to sell its first shares to the public and buy as many as 100 new aircraft to expand in the face of tighter international sanctions, the company’s chairman said.

New York Times: The Educational Testing Service, the company that offers the Test of English as a Foreign Language, announced Thursday that it would resume registering students for its tests inside Iran after striking a deal with a bank willing to process payments.

AFP: A Canadian court on Thursday sentenced a Toronto man to four years and three months prison for attempting to export dual-use nuclear-related items to Iran, in violation of UN resolutions.

BBC: Taking the boat across Dubai's old creek is like a journey back in time.

AP: An Iranian official says cigarettes smuggled into Iran have been tainted with pig blood and nuclear material as part of a Western conspiracy.

Iran Focus: Tehran, Jul. 30 - Iran's Court of Appeal has upheld a death sentence for political prisoner Jaafar Kazemi, his lawyer said.

Iran Focus: Tehran, Jul. 30 – An earthquake measuring 5.7 on the Richter scale jolted north-eastern Iran on Friday, injuring at least 110 people with one of the injured in serious condition.

Iran Focus: Tehran, Jul. 29 – From the Grapevine... Passengers and employees in Tehran's southern and western bus terminals reported new graffiti in at least 30 different locations.

Iran Focus: Tehran, Jul. 29 – From the Grapevine... Pro-democracy activists in Tehran have continued writing graffiti on metro and petrol stations, urging people to hold new anti-government protests and stage strikes.

AFP: Top US officials announced Thursday they were heading to China in late August to press Beijing to "step up" and fully implement sanctions against Iran over its suspect nuclear program.