tehran

"Our society has moral principles," Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Sarif said at a press conference, earning international condemnation.

A 21-year-old man convicted of raping three boys when he was a teenager and sentenced to death has been hanged despite a chief justice's order that the case be reviewed, the man's lawyer and a New-York based rights group said Thursday. Makwan Moloudzadeh was executed late Tuesday and his family told to come pick up his body for burial Wednesday, Human Rights Watch officials said. ''We were expecting an order for retrial by the Supreme Court,'' Saeed Eqbali, the lawyer for the sentenced man, told the Associated Press. ''There would have been no harm in a retrial and it could have saved a life.''

After San Francisco city officials rejected a plan to bring the USS Iowa to the city earlier this year, supporters of the idea have come up with a new plan that they hope will convince local leaders to welcome the historic battleship: turning part of the vessel into a museum honoring the military contributions of gays, lesbians, ethnic minorities, and women.

A week before a planned gay pride parade in Jerusalem, Orthodox Jews are warning of violence, and a government minister said the march might have to be scrapped.