Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's recent pick for the country's top vice president continued to draw fire Thursday, with a senior cleric issuing a fatwa against the appointment, a leading reformist newspaper reported Sunday. According to the newspaper -- Etemad-e Melli -- Grand Ayatollah Nasser Makarem Shirazi's Islamic edict against the selection of Esfandyar Rahim Mashaie is part of a larger fatwa issued Wednesday -- the same day the nation's supreme leader reportedly called on Ahmadinejad to remove Mashaie from the ...

You don't know whom to trust nowadays in Tehran. Members of the feared Basij paramilitary roam the streets at night, often blending in with people lounging in parks or window-shopping at the capital's many squares. Locals are reluctant to discuss anything remotely political in public, let alone divulge their opinions. And looming over everything else is the constant paranoia of surveillance: on the Web, over the notoriously unreliable mobile networks, on the hectic, crowded streets, even at work. In ...

Whatever the end result of the current electoral crisis in Iran, the dramatic rise of national politics has already cast a long and enduring shadow over the geopolitics of the region. No country can go back to business as usual. The climate has changed -- for good. (CNN) -- Whatever the end result of the current electoral crisis in Iran, the dramatic rise of national politics has already cast a long and enduring shadow over the geopolitics of the region. ...

Iranians have been waiting for weeks to hear from former President Ayatullah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. At the height of the demonstrations on Tehran's streets, when hundreds of thousands of people called for a do-over of the June 12 presidential election officially won by incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, many Iranians have wondered if Rafsanjani, one of the Islamic Republic's most powerful men and a leading supporter of defeated presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi, would mount a challenge to Ahmadinejad's main patron, the ...

Former president and one of Iran's most powerful clerics, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, has started delivering the Friday sermon at Tehran University, witnesses told CNN. Rafsanjani, who backs reformist Mir Hossein Moussavi, the opposition candidate who challenged hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the disputed June 12 elections, planned to offer a solution to the ongoing crisis in the latter part of his sermon, witnesses said. They added that a large crowd had gathered to hear his highly anticipated remarks and ...

London's Daily Mail newspaper paid for the interview, according to a source close to the Jackson family and another source familiar with the interview arrangements. The amount of money paid was not disclosed. LaToya Jackson was "very candid" throughout the four-hour interview, which took place in Los Angeles, California, last Thursday, said Caroline Graham, the Daily Mail reporter who conducted the interview. Jackson cited no evidence of a murder conspiracy, Graham said, but she did tell the paper the ...

Michael Jackson's sister, LaToya Jackson, told a London newspaper she suspects her brother was "murdered" in a conspiracy by "a shadowy entourage." London's Daily Mail newspaper paid for the interview, according to a source close to the Jackson family and another source familiar with the interview arrangements. The amount of money paid was not disclosed. LaToya Jackson was "very candid" throughout the four-hour interview, which took place in Los Angeles, California, last Thursday, said Caroline Graham, the Daily Mail reporter ...

The imprisoned leader of the Nigerian militant group MEND has accepted an unconditional amnesty offer from the government, his lawyer said Friday. All 228 people aboard the plane were killed in the June 1 crash. The flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder, commonly known as black boxes, stop giving out acoustic broadcasts after 30 days. But investigators decided to continue listening for the "pings" for 10 days after that. Now, the two U.S. naval vessels and a French ...

The search for the data and voice recorders from the Air France plane that crashed more than a month ago off Brazil's coast is entering a new phase, according to France's accident investigation agency. All 228 people aboard the plane were killed in the June 1 crash. The flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder, commonly known as black boxes, stop giving out acoustic broadcasts after 30 days. But investigators decided to continue listening for the "pings" for 10 ...

Nearly two weeks of silence on the streets of Tehran were broken in the evening of July 9 when thousands marched through the central districts of the Iranian capital to protest the June 12 presidential election. Another anniversary helped precipitate the show of apparent defiance: the 10th anniversary of a bloody student uprising that was brutally put down by the government. Despite threats earlier in the day of a "crushing" response, men, women and even some children went onto ...