The Latest from Iran (11 April): Paying the Bills

2035 GMT: Two pictures from today's demonstration in front of the Saudi Embassy in Tehran by Basij militia and other protesters.

2025 GMT: At the Movies (Political Prisoner Edition). About 17,000 members of the global film community have signed a petition calling on the Iranian judiciary to cancel the six-year prison sentences of Iranian film directors Jafar Panahi and Mohammad Rasoulof.

Signatories include filmmakers Francis Ford Coppola, Costa Gavras, David Cronenberg, Alejandro González Inarritu, David Lynch, Marjan Satrapi, Aki Kurismaki and Lars Von Trier. They condemn the “oppressive, shameful and intolerable” sentences issued against Panahi and Rasoulof, and they say the campaign will continue until the two are freed and allowed to resume their careers.

In addition to his prison sentence, Panahi has been banned from making films for 20 years.

1630 GMT: Rafsanjani Watch. Iranian officials are saying that one of the men captured on film insulting Faezeh Hashemi, the daughter of former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, has been arrested.

The incident in February came just before Rafsanjani was defeated in his campaign for re-election as head of the Assembly of Experts and amidst pressure on his family. Some prominent officials, including the head of Iran's judiciary, Sadegh Larijani, subsequently denounced the harassment of families of leading political figures.

1625 GMT: Hidden Imam News. More developments surrounding our feature this morning on "The Movie, The President, and the Hidden Imam"....

A website supporting the documentary purporting to show the imminent return of the 12th Imam, with the Supreme Leader leading the movement and President Ahmadinejad as its prophet, is back up after being down earlier today.

And the pro-Government Absar News has jabbed at Hossein Shariatmadari, the editor of the hard-line Kayhan, who criticised the documentary. Absar alleged that Shariatmadari is making the comments for fear of his own political position, starting a movement to eliminate the Government ahead of Parliamentary elections in 2012.

1620 GMT: Labour Front. About 1500 workers at the Bandar Imam Petrochemical Complex in Mahshahr in southwestern Iran have have continued their protest over wages and working conditions.

Claimed footage of the protest:

1615 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Sen's Daily offers an English translation of the news that Sari University student Sara Mahboubi has been sentenced to 10 months in prison and excluded from higher education for belonging to a Facebook group.

1530 GMT: Paying the Bills. Back from an extended break to work with a very promising American documentary on the CIA and US media to find that the head of Parliament's Energy Commission has projected that energy bills will rise 500% this year after subsidy cuts.

1010 GMT: Line of the Day. Most of the summary of State news agency IRNA's interview with Ayatollah Mahdavi Kani, the head of the Assembly of Experts, on the US and human rights is the expected rhetoric, "Human rights has become an excuse to hammer the governments which are opposed to your policies while you yourselves do not respect it."

But the article is lifted by the unknown journalist who produced this translation: “Do Americans who bang the drums for human rights really walk the talk? Definitely not."

0610 GMT: The Exploding Pipelines. Thomas Erdbrink of The Washington Post summarises this weekend's curious episode of explosions outside Qom which damaged three major gas pipelines.

Iranian authorities have said the pipelines are now repaired but have not made any statement about the cause of the blasts. However, Parviz Sorouri, a member of Parliament's Homeland Security Commission, said "terrorist groups" were responsible. He called for increased protection of the pipelines and a meeting of key ministries to safeguard energy transportation systems.

A similar explosion on 11 February temporarily halted north-south gas transportation in the country.

0515 GMT: In a separate entry, we look at the controversy over a film --- which has distribution in millions of copies on CD and which the producer claims is part-funded by the Revolutionary Guards --- linking the imminent return of Shi'a's "Hidden Imam" to the Supreme Leader and President Ahmadinejad.

In connection with that, we note a Facebook page presenting a timeline of remarks by Ahmadinejad and his supporters up to 2009 about the Hidden Imam.

0510 GMT: Many of the newspapers in Iran today --- though not the State news agency IRNA, which prefers to look at the diplomatic argument between Tehran and Kuwait, with the tit-for-tat expulsion of diplomats --- feature stories about subsidy cuts and the rising cost of energy.

One blogger, Mehdi Khazali, presents documents to claim almost a 5000% rise in a household bill --- yes, 5000% with the cost escalating from 146,000 rials (about $14) to 7,318,000 (about $700).