IRAN said Israel was behind the murder of one of its nuclear scientists, who was killed by a magnet bomb fixed to his car by a motorcyclist.

A bomb has killed a university professor in an attack coinciding with the second anniversary of a explosion that killed a senior Iranian nuclear scientist, Iran's semi-official Fars news agency said.

Investigators today found the black box from a passenger jet which crashed while trying to make an emergency landing in a snowstorm in north-western Iran, killing at least 77 people.

AUTHORITIES reviewing a death by stoning sentence against an Iranian woman convicted of adultery could still halt the punishment, a senior judiciary official said yesterday as Iran struggles to mute an international outcry over the case.

An Iranian judge has ordered the amputation of the hand of a man who confessed to robbing a sweet shop, local media reported today.

Iran has obtained four S-300 surface-to-air missiles despite Russia’s refusal to deliver them to Tehran under a valid contract, a semi-official Iranian news agency claimed today.

IRAN will file a formal complaint with the UN against the United States, after President Barack Obama excluded Iran from a pledge not to use nuclear weapons against countries that do not have them, the Foreign Ministry said yesterday.

Iran will file a formal complaint with the UN against the US after President Barack Obama excluded Iran from a pledge not to use nuclear weapons against countries that do not have them, the foreign ministry said today.

IRAN yesterday tested its most advanced missiles to cap two days of war games, raising more international concern and stronger pressure to come clean on the newly revealed nuclear site Tehran was secretly constructing.

NORTH Korean leader Kim Jong Il has issued a “special pardon” for two American journalists and ordered their release at former US president Bill Clinton’s request, North Korean state media reported yesterday.

A group of opposition political activists and protesters are standing trial in Tehran on charges of rioting after the disputed presidential election, it was reported today.

Iranian authorities have detained several local employees of the British Embassy in Tehran, a move that UK foreign secretary David Miliband today called “harassment and intimidation” and reflected a hardening of the regime’s stance toward the West.

Iranian authorities detained eight local employees of the British Embassy in Tehran for what is described as their alleged role in post-election protests, according to media reports today.

IRANIAN security officials defused a bomb planted on a plane carrying 131 passengers, officials said yesterday, the latest incident of violence ahead of next month’s presidential election.

Iran forced a Western aircraft that accidentally entered its airspace to land, then allowed the plane to continue to Afghanistan after questioning its passengers.

The deputy commander of Iran’s air force said today that plans have been drawn up to bomb Israel if the Jewish state attacks Iran.

The Iranian news agency Fars issued a new picture of British sailors detained by Iran today, an apparent breach of the understanding that no more such photographs would be published.

Iran today said it had arrested a man on suspicion of selling Iran’s nuclear secrets to an exiled Iranian opposition group, state radio reported.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said today that his country has expanded its contentious uranium enrichment programme at a plant in central Iran, a semi-official news agency reported.