Iranians

Patriotic Persian music blasted from the car that led thousands of demonstrators down Westwood Boulevard one recent afternoon, past Persian restaurants and bookstores. A plane hired by a local Persian TV station streaked overhead, flying a banner proclaiming: "We support freedom in Iran."

As authorities in Tehran have blocked opposition websites, jammed satellite TV channels and banned foreign journalists from covering demonstrations against last week's disputed elections, Iranians living in the U.S. have rushed to fill the communications gap. Iranian students and exiles here are flooding Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and their e-mail distribution lists with footage of bloodied protesters and other snippets gleaned from friends and relatives back home.

Was he an Iranian arms smuggler or did he restore religious sites? Was that white powder he had on him cocaine or salt? Who arrested him, and why was he freed? Those questions surround the detention of an Iranian man, Nader Qorbani, accused by U.S. officials of being a senior officer of Iran's Quds Force paramilitary unit but who was quietly released Friday after three days in custody.

"Have you seen your ballot?" Gloria Seiff of Beverly Hills asked friend and fellow resident Betty Harris over the phone. Harris had not. She opened the mail-in ballot and took one look. "I was shocked by it," she said. For the first time, Beverly Hills had translated its entire absentee and sample ballots into Persian. The ballots for the March 6 municipal election, in which two City Council seats are up for grabs, went out this month, and the response was swift.

An Iranian refugee who had been living with her two children at Moscow's international airport for nine months has arrived in Vancouver. Zahra Kamalfar, who says she was jailed and beaten for demonstrating against Iran's government in 2004, burst out sobbing, then fainted Thursday when reunited with her brother, Nader, after nearly 14 years.

Amid rising tensions with Iran, U.S. officials have abruptly revoked the visas of dozens of Iranian professionals headed to a university reunion in Northern California this weekend, refusing them entry as they landed at several U.S. airports. The men and women had obtained 15-day visitor visas to attend the fourth global alumni reunion of Iran's Sharif University of Technology, a prestigious institution known as the "MIT of Iran."

Four Iranian brothers jailed more than three years as security threats and accused of supporting terrorists sued former Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert Mueller III and other officials Monday, charging that the government held them illegally as punishment for refusing to work as informants. The suit, filed in U.S.

Who wants Khaled Abou el Fadl dead? The question has haunted the UCLA Islamic law professor since April, when he says a bullet whizzed past his ear and lodged in a book as he was standing near his living room bookshelf in front of his open front door. His fears intensified this month, after a news report in the Anaheim-based Al Watan newspaper and other Arabic-language media carried what Abou el Fadl calls a "solicitation of murder" against him.

Here, in two words, is the architecture that Los Angeles, the city that loves and hates architecture, currently loves to hate: Persian Palace. No other coinage so immediately evinces dismissal and revulsion. It is the ultimate form of "mansionization," taking a small lot and building the largest possible box on it.