New York Times

The Hyundai Motor Company, the automaking subsidiary of Hyundai, the South Korean conglomerate, has quietly ended its business dealings with Iran, where it had extensive operations, including a joint venture to make cars. United Against Nuclear Iran, an American group that has advocated economic sanctions to pressure Iran over its disputed nuclear program, has reclassified Hyundai Motor, putting it in the “withdrawn” category on a list the group has compiled of foreign businesses that deal with Iran. Hyundai Motor officials did not respond to requests for comment. A strict new American law is putting pressure on foreign companies to reduce or eliminate their operations in Iran or risk penalties in the United States market. Hyundai is the second big foreign automaker in a week to pull back from Iran. Last week, General Motors said its French partner, PSA Peugeot Citroën, had suspended shipments of components to the Iran Khodro Industrial Group, an Iranian vehicle maker, to comply with American restraints on Iran trade.

Radio Zamaneh: The head of Iran’s Welfare Organization has warned preschool and daycare centres against teaching “immoral programs such as dancing” to children.

The Fars News Agency reports that Valiollah Nasr, Director General of Tehran Province Welfare, said on Tuesday: “Educational programs must be in line with Islamic principles.”

He added that the preschools and daycares have been given set curricula and cannot teach “immoral programs.”

Radio Zamaneh:

Iran’s Minister of Cooperatives, Labour and Social Security has been summoned to Parliament to explain the recent appointment of Saeed Mortazavi to head the Social Security Fund.

ILNA reports that Abdolreza Sheikoleslami must attend a parliamentary Q & A with a number of MPs who are critical of leaving the Social Security Fund in the hands of Mortazavi. He’s the former Tehran prosecutor who was removed from his position in the judiciary after the media exposed a scandal regarding prisoner deaths at the Kahrizak Detention Centre.

Mortazavi remains one of the prime suspects in the Kahrizak deaths, having been accused of ordering the transfer of post-election detainees to this facility, knowing full well they would be severely mistreated.

China and Iran have agreed to increase trade between the two countries beyond $50 billion in the coming year.

MohammadJavad Mohammadizadeh, Iranian vice president, met with China’s Deputy Prime Minister Li Keqiang today to discuss mutual relations and regional and international issues, according to IRNA.

Mohammadizadeh told IRNA that the talks were “pleasant and beneficial”, adding that the two countries are determined to expand relations.

TEHRAN (AFP)— Iran declared on Monday it will not be swayed from its nuclear “path” by sanctions, a week before talks with world powers that are increasingly seen as a last chance for diplomacy in its showdown with the West.

“The sanctions may have caused us small problems but we will continue our path,” Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi vowed in an interview with the official Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA).

“We do not underestimate any enemy, no matter how tiny and lowly they are. The regime’s officials — the supreme leader, the president, the army, the (Revolutionary) Guards and Basij (militia) — are completely vigilant. And the nation is prepared to defend the achievements of Islamic Iran,” he said.

Iran will introduce the first phase of its domestic Internet network by May 21, the state-run Fars news agency reported, citing Iranian Minister of Communication and Information Technology Reza Taghipour.

Taghipour said the launch of the network was a priority of his ministry in the new Iranian year that started on March 20. A local data center, search engine and domestic e-mail service are being completed, Fars cited him as saying, without elaborating on the projects.

Iranian officials had earlier announced plans to set up a national Internet search engine by 2012, which they said will be more suited to the needs of Iranians as it will produce a smaller list of results than others such as Yahoo and Google.

The Associated Press

ESFARAYEN, Iran (AP) — Iranians flocked to parks and orchards to mark Sizdeh Bedar, an ancient festival that predates Islam and goes back thousands of years to the time when Zoroastrianism was the predominant religion of Persia.

Iran’s hard-line ruling clerics have discouraged many pre-Islamic rituals, but they’ve been unable to put Iranians off the Persian New Year, or Nowruz, and its ending celebration of Sizdeh Bedar.

The festival falls on the thirteenth day of Nowruz — Sizdeh is 13 and Bedar means “passing” in Persian.

http://postnoon.com/2012/03/31/is-iran-using-hackers-to-attack-the-foreign-press/40731

In an ironic twist, the BBC is reporting that its network came under a distributed denial of service attack launched from Iran, the same method used by hacktivists to disable websites used, in their eyes, to stifle free speech.

As part of a campaign of crackdown against the press, Iran has reportedly started attacking news outlets using techniques more commonly associated with hacker collectives than with governments.

BAGHDAD, March 30 (UPI) — The U.S. government is reportedly blocking Iranian moves to siphon oil from disputed oil fields on the border with Iraq to get around tightening international sanctions that threaten its energy industry, Iran’s economic backbone.

Tehran’s strategy appears to have been to extract oil from the border fields that would fall outside sanctions imposed by the United Nations, the United States and the European Union over Iran’s contentious nuclear program.

These are expected to become even more restricting when an EU ban on buying oil from Iran takes effect in July.

IranBriefing-Following news of the disappearance of journalist Massoud Lavasani last week, his father told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, “Something terrible happened to my son, but he doesn’t want to say anything out of fear for his family’s security. I am really sorry to live in Iran under these circumstances. I have lived my life and have no fear, but because I am worried for my son, I cannot say anything. Only let everyone know that we are under tight control and we are not safe.”

Massoud Lavasani was arrested on 13 June 2009 on charges of “propagating against the regime.” He was released on 7 September 2011 after serving two years in prison. On 6 January 2012, security forces entered his home and arrested his wife, Fatemeh Kheradmand, also a journalist. Authorities released Kheradmand on 31 January 2012. Since then, both journalists, who have a toddler, have kept complete silence. On 22 March 2012, Kheradmand wrote on her Facebook page that her husband had disappeared, saying, “Massoud left home yesterday to get some fresh air, but he has not yet returned and I have no news of him.”