Iran's queen of pop, Googoosh, has released a video in support of her country's gay and lesbian community, becoming the first prominent Iranian with such a huge following to speak out against homophobia.
A woman belonging to Iran's Baluch ethnic group has been chosen as the mayor of a provincial city, in a rare example of a minority politician being promoted in the Islamic republic.
Iran's revolutionary guards have announced the arrest of "a network of homosexuals and satanists" in the western city of Kermanshah, close to the country's border with Iraq, prompting fresh alarm over the treatment of gay people in the Islamic republic.
