Reuters: Seventeen people were killed on Saturday when a minibus slammed head-on into a truck in northern Iran, a senior police officer said. Mohammad Rouyanian, head of
Iran’s road police, told state television the vehicles collided
after the minibus tried to overtake a tractor near Firouzkouh,
130 km east of Tehran.

Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Jul. 16 – At least 100 demonstrators were arrested and 60 buses damaged in clashes that erupted Saturday after a football match in Iran’s second largest city. Security forces and young people clashed over a large area of the city of Mashad after a football match between Saba Battery and Abu-Moslem football clubs.

AFP: Iran’s hardline poll watchdog insisted Saturday that the outcome of last month’s presidential election was final after reformist Interior Minister Abdolvahed Moussavi-Lari said he was ready to order a partial recount. “The election is a finished matter,” Guardians Council spokesman Gholam Hossein Elham told the student news agency ISNA.

AFP: Iran’s spy chief on Saturday warned the country’s nuclear scientists against “traps” laid by Israeli and American intelligence agencies.
“Iranian scientists must beware of enemy plots,” Intelligence Minister Ali Yunessi was quoted as saying by the official IRNA news agency. “Americans and Israelis are trying to approach (them) through different means.”

Iran Focus: Mahabad, Iran, Jul. 16 – Unrest continued in the north-western town of Mahabad, Iranian Kurdistan province, last night, with clashes erupting between locals and State Security Forces, following a week of similar anti-government protests which flared up after news broke out of the brutal murder of a young Kurdish man by the SSF.