BEIRUT (AP) – Government forces surrounded residents of a restive Syrian village in a valley and killed all those trapped inside — more than 100 people — in a barrage of rockets, tank shells, bombs and gunfire that lasted for hours, a witness and two activist groups said Wednesday.

The attack on Tuesday pushed the death toll for two days of violence across Syria to more than 200, and was one of the deadliest single events of the entire nine-month uprising against President Bashar Assad‘s authoritarian rule.

The White House reacted by renewing its call for Assad to step down, saying his regime does not deserve to rule.

The offensive targeted the village of Kfar Owaid, about 30 miles from the northern border with Turkey. It is part of the rugged mountainous region of Jabal al-Zawiyah, which has been the scene of clashes between troops and army defectors and intense anti-government protests for weeks. Syrian troops began attacking the region on Saturday, residents said.

“It was an organized massacre,” said Rami Abdul-Rahman, head of the British-based activist group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. “The troops surrounded people then killed them.”

Syrian officials have not commented on the allegations.

Starred student activist Zia Nabavi is illegally held in prison exile. In Iran, a starred student is banned from pursuing higher education because he or she spoke out against educational discrimination, a practice denied by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Persian2English – On Friday, Zia Nabavi, the “starred” education advocacy activist held illegally in exile, was violently transferred along with 59 other political prisoners to another section (ward of Karoun prison (in Ahvaz city) which holds people held on theft and drug-related charges.

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Several months ago, Zia Nabavi had written an open letter to Mohammad Larijani, the Head of the Human Rights Council for Iran’s Judiciary, detailing the gruesome conditions in Karoun prison’s ward 1, the area reserved for political prisoners. Shortly after the publication of the letter, Zia and other political prisoners were transferred to Ahvaz Clinic, a detention center with slightly better conditions. However, sometime between July to September, Zia and numerous others were secretly transferred back to ward 1 in Karoun prison. According to the latest reports, Zia and many other political prisoners are crammed into a small space in ward 8, and the conditions are far worse- in terms of hygiene and population density- than ward 1. Additionally, 15 of the transferred political prisoners have no bed to sleep on.**

Initially, the political prisoners, including Zia Nabavi, had resisted the transfer to the drug-addict ward, however, when the Iranian Special Guards forces violently invaded their cell, they were forced to move. Ward 1 is now being used to hold prisoners with tuberculosis.

TEHRAN (Reuters) – Iran has moved most of its government websites from foreign-based hosting companies to new computer facilities inside the country, to protect them against cyber attacks, a senior official said on Tuesday.

The new security arrangements were announced a year after a Iran said a powerful computer virus known as Stuxnet attacked computers at its Bushehr nuclear reactor.

“The location of the hosts of more than 90 percent of Iran’s governmental internet sites has been transferred inside the country,” Ali Hakim Javadi, Iran’s deputy minister for communications and information technology, told the official IRNA news agency.

AI-Students would ordinarily celebrate if they found out that they received a star, and be even more delighted if they got three stars. But in Iran receiving stars is cause for distress and consternation. Being assigned three stars from Iranian authorities means that students are permanently barred from pursuing their university education in Iran.

Such is the fate of hundreds of Iranian students who have done nothing more than peacefully work on behalf of candidates for public office, join student associations, write for student publications and blogs, or participate in peaceful demonstrations.  This is in addition to harsh prison sentences served in deplorable conditions in filthy and unsafe prisons often handed down to activists.

Sayed Ziaoddin (Zia) Nabavi is one of the many courageous Iranian student activists who we remember as he spends his 28th birthday behind bars on December 21.

Ayatollah Javadi Amoli said that if someone was not wearing the veil [or was not properly covered] she will [change her appearance] if other women look at her with hate and resentment and that this ‘glare’ was obligatory.

“It is not true that if someone is indifferent  towards those who do not have proper covering, it would not be considered a sin for her/him; but actually the sin will be considered for both of them”, he added. (Resalat state-run daily – Dec. 19, 2011)

By Laurent Maillard

TEHRAN (AFP) — Western sanctions have taken such a toll on Iran over the past 18 months that now — as the screw is about to be tightened yet further — Tehran’s studied insouciance is slipping, with officials admitting the economic damage being felt.

“War-time conditions” demanded dramatic policy reactions, the head of Tehran’s chamber of trade and industry, Yahya AlEshaq, told Sunday’s Iran Daily newspaper.

The country must now act “as if under siege,” the governor of Iran’s central bank, Mahmoud Bahmani, agreed in comments to reporters and businessmen over the past week.

Signs of economic difficulties have been accumulating: investments are becoming rare, imports are becoming pricier, and Iran’s currency is sliding.

The United States and Europe are about to again ratchet up the pressure with measures against Iran’s central bank and vital oil sector.

They will add to severe sanctions imposed since 2010 by a West trying to halt Iran’s nuclear programme, which it suspects masks ambitions for atomic weapons, despite Tehran’s denials.

The growing evidence of the sanctions’ impact has prompted Iranian officials to drop previous assertions of business-as-usual and start acknowledging some economic pain.

“We can’t pretend the sanctions aren’t having an effect,” Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi admitted on the weekend.

But “we are not really worried,” he told the official IRNA news agency, explaining that “appropriate responses have been prepared for the worst case scenario.”

A “road map” to circumvent new sanctions had been readied, he said.

AlEshaq also said “the sanctions have had some impact on the domestic economy,” notably by making imports 24% more costly.

“The enemies have embarked on a war in the economic sector,” he said, calling for “war-era management” to be imposed in return.

Iran has already been establishing trade links with other, non-Western countries, notably China. But imports have still declined 20% in the past six months according to official figures.

Exports continue to hold up, however, largely thanks to the high price for oil in the global market — a commodity that accounts for 80% of foreign earnings for Iran, OPEC’s second-biggest producer after Saudi Arabia.

This year, the value of Iran’s exports topped $140 billion, with oil and derivative products accounting for $120 billion of that.

But those figures “hide the fact that a growing part of trade is now being done under barter arrangements,” said one European expert in Tehran who could not be named because of political sensitivities.

“To get around the US embargo on dollar transactions, the main buyers of Iranian crude, such as China, Japan and South Korea, don’t pay in cash any more but rather through credit lines extended to Iranian companies, which reduces the central bank’s resources,” the expert said.

Iran said at the beginning of this year it had around $100 billion in foreign reserves and gold.

But dwindling revenue has forced the central bank in recent months to dramatically cut foreign currency sales to businesses and individuals, an Iranian banker noted.

The central bank has also eased up on its previous strong support for Iran’s rial, letting the currency depreciate 20% since September.

The sanctions have also taken a noticeable bite out of the oil and gas industry.

Oil production, which has dropped 10% since 2008, continues to shrink with November output this year put at 3.5 million barrels per day according to OPEC.

Lacking options, Tehran has recently announced it is suspending several non-essential projects. And even ones deemed priorities, such as the development of the giant South Pars gas field in the Gulf, are running behind schedule, according to Iranian media.

Foreign “investment isn’t coming any more, or very little is, because of the hostile moves” by the West, Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi said in November.

He calculated his country needed $50 billion per year to develop Iran’s production.

As a result, Iran has increasingly turned to its domestic market for capital, with varied success.