As university students prepare to return to classes in Iran, recent statements by the country's supreme leader are feeding fears that a new cultural revolution could be in the offing.
Some recognize echoes of the mass purges and curriculum revisions that took place just after the founding of the Islamic Republic 30 years ago.
Allegations of prison authorities' use of rape as a means of punishment or intimidation in the Islamic republic are nothing new.
But for the first time, a high-profile figure in the Islamic establishment has acknowledged the apparent rise in the practice, and is calling for an investigation.
Khatami had strong words for the trial, at which several of his close allies, including former Vice President Mohammad Ali Abtahi and a number of other prominent reformists, are charged with serious security crimes.
Reformist presidential candidate Mir Hossein Musavi has formally appealed against Iran's election result to the legislative body the Guardians Council, according to a statement on his website.
If there was a contest for the shortest publication time for a newspaper, then "Yas No" would be the winner.
The publication hit the newsstands on May 16 for the first time in six years, relaunched by reformists hoping to use the paper to get their message out ahead of the June 12 presidential vote.
A court in Iran has heard an appeal from Roxana Saberi, the Iranian-American journalist who has been sentenced to eight years in prison on charges of spying for the United States.
A new law that applies only to Shi'ite Muslims in Afghanistan threatens to reintroduce some Taliban-era restrictions and reverse progress on women's rights in a country still struggling to recover from years of oppressive rule.
The law, which has not yet been published, was passed by parliament and was reportedly signed by President Hamid Karzai earlier this month.
Farid Hashemi's latest "status update" on his Facebook page says a lot about his state of mind.
"It's better to be born as a dog in a democracy than to be a human in a dictatorship," he writes.
Twenty-eight-year-old Hashemi is a senior member of Iran's largest pro-reform student group, Daftar Tahkim Vahdat, which is a regular target of pressure from the state.
Abdollah Nouri's supporters describe him as man of principle who is willing to defend his beliefs.
These qualities, they say, make Nouri the only reformist figure who can bring real change to Iran. And by real changes, they mean changes to Iran's Islamic political structure, where the real power lies in the hands of the supreme leader.
