Iran Focus: Tehran, Aug. 18 – Cholera scare has left a popular spa town in northern Iran deserted at the height of the tourist season, according to the local press. The reported outbreak of cholera in the town of Sareyn in the Caspian province of Ardebil has forced the authorities to shut down restaurants, hotels and guesthouses in the famous spa resort.

Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Aug. 18 – A 21-year old prisoner from the southern port city of Bandar Abbass was hanged in prison, a state-run daily reported on Thursday.
The young man, identified as Farshid Farighi, was hanged in prison after he was convicted of murder, according to the daily Javan.

Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Aug. 17 – A scientific study conducted by two independent experts found that 71 percent of teenagers in Iran suffer from depression, a Tehran-based news agency reported. Mahdieh Emami and Mona Mir-Mohammad Jaafari noted that teenage girls in Iran were twice as likely as boys to suffer from depression, the news agency SINA reported.

Iran Focus: London, Aug. 18 – Iran is secretly producing thousands of centrifuges capable of enriching uranium for an atomic bomb in violation of an agreement it had signed with Europe’s Britain, France, and Germany last November which required it to freeze all activities of the nuclear fuel cycle, the main Iranian opposition coalition charged on Thursday. In a press conference in London, Hossein Abedini of the National Council of Resistance of Iran told reporters that Iran’s Ministry of Defence and Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) had secretly produced the centrifuges on the orders of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Aug. 18 – Iran’s ambassador to Ireland was recently recalled to Tehran and ordered to remain in the country while he was being investigated for money laundering in favour of a presidential hopeful during the June elections, according to a government-sponsored Persian-language website.