Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Aug. 29 – Iran’s new hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is planning to appoint his close confidante Ali Saeedlou as director of the country’s central bank, according to sources close to the presidential office.
Ahmadinejad nominated Saeedlou, 41, as his oil minister, but he failed to win enough ballots during the confirmation vote in Iran’s Majlis (Parliament).

Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Aug. 29 – Iran’s State Security Forces have arrested 442 “trouble-makers” in the coastal province of Gilan, northern Iran, according to the provincial police press office.
The arrests come after Iranian authorities announced that they had launched a new crackdown to root out dissent in society.

Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Aug. 29 – Iran appointed on Sunday a new deputy chief for state broadcasting, a state-run news agency reported. Abdolreza Rahmani was appointed as the deputy head of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) by its current chief Seyyed Ezatollah Zarqami.

AFP: A 10-year-old Iranian boy launched a landmark legal action against the Australian government Monday, with his lawyers arguing he was psychologically damaged by living in immigration detention camps for more than a year. Through his father Mahommad Saeed Badraie, Shayan Badraie is suing the Immigration Department and two detention centre operators in a case which could open the way for other inmates to claim compensation from the government.

Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Aug. 28 – A once firebrand Shiite cleric who acted as the leader of radical Islamist students who seized the United States embassy in Tehran in 1979 was appointed on Sunday to head the Militant Clerics Association.