I have been rather neglectful of Australia in recent months so this week I want to focus on one of the great icon estates of Australian wine as a way of showing that there is more to this country than big blowsy Shiraz and Chardonnay.

THE sad news of the death of Paddy Keogh of Wines Direct was announced recently and this column would like to extend sympathies to his family and work colleagues. 

WHITE Rabbit, Red Rabbit is not your ordinary theatre production.

Clashes between Iranian police and tens of thousands of protesters wracked central Tehran today killing one person, as opposition supporters tried to evoke the spirit of Egypt's popular uprising.

PRESIDENT Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced new advances in Iran’s uranium enrichment drive yesterday, as government supporters rallied en masse and the opposition reported clashes on the 31st anniversary of the revolution that brought the clerical establishment to power.

TENS of thousands of hard-line government supporters turned out for state-sponsored rallies yesterday, some of them calling for the execution of opposition leaders as Iran’s police chief threatened to show “no mercy” in crushing any new protests by the pro-reform movement.

Two prominent critics of the Iranian government have been arrested after clashes overnight in Tehran.

A LEAKED memo appearing to show Tehran’s efforts to design an atomic bomb trigger was forged by the United States, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told a US news programme yesterday.

Thousands of Iranian anti-government protesters clashed with hard-liners on the streets of Tehran today as marches turned into running battles.

International human rights organisations today warned that many prominent activists and politicians have been arrested in Iran in response to protests over the country's disputed presidential election.

More than 100,000 opponents of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad defied an Iranian Interior Ministry ban today and streamed into central Tehran to cheer their pro-reform leader in his first public appearance since elections that he alleges were marred by fraud.

Iran’s Supreme Court upheld the stoning death sentence against woman convicted of adultery in the southern city of Shiraz, an independent newspaper reported today.

A bomb explosion in a mosque in southern Iran has killed scores of people, state television reported tonight.

Home-made vodka has killed 13 people in southern Iran and badly sickened 25 others, state-run television reported today.

An Iranian intelligence agent has been charged with the murder of a journalist who had duel Canadian-Iranian nationality.

Ladan and Laleh Bijani, 29-year-old Iranian twins born joined at the head, will walk into a Singapore operating room on Sunday and sit down for separation surgery that is expected to last days and could kill one or both of them.

WILD clashes between students seeking an end to Islamic rule and hardline vigilantes subsided in Tehran yesterday, but sporadic violence was reported elsewhere in the country with one person being reported killed in a southern city.