The Latest from Iran (19 August): "A Lonely Purgatory"

1940 GMT: Fashion Watch. The hijab controversy (see 1330 GMT) showed up in the Friday Prayer of Ayatollah Alamolhoda in Mashhad, as he took direct aim at the special issue of the pro-Ahmadinejad Iran, "Black chador was approved by the Prophet and not Qajar kings!"

Iran had featured an interview with a former senior advisor to President Ahmadinejad, who allegedly said that 19th-century Shah had brought the chador to Iran after seeing women dressed in black for evening parties in Europe.

Alamolhoda said that those responsible for the "Khatoon" special issue must be judged in court.

1500 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Zoleykha Mousavi, the mother of detained Hossein Ronaghi Maleki (Babak Khorramdin), has said that she has been warned by authorities, "If you continue to give interviews, we will arrest your daughters too."

Mousavi said earlier this week that Maleki had been beaten in prison.

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The Latest from Iran (26 May): Paving the Way for Dictatorship?

Footage of the blaze at the Abadan oil refinery on Tuesday

2015 GMT: A Fire at the Refinery. Siemens AG, Germany’s largest engineering company, has denied that it supplied compressors for Iran’s Abadan oil refinery, where a blast on Tuesday killed at least four people and wounded at least 25.

An Iranian newspaper had claimed that Siemens supplied the compressor that exploded, causing the blaze.

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