Foreign Secretary William Hague called today for more sanctions against Iran to "increase the isolation of the regime" from the international community.

Iran's first nuclear power plant has finally begun to provide electricity to the county's national grid, official media reported yesterday, a long-delayed milestone in the nuclear ambitions of a country the West fears is covertly trying to develop atomic weapons.

The UN nuclear agency has said it is "increasingly concerned" about intelligence suggesting that Iran continues to secretly work on developing a nuclear payload for a missile and other components of a nuclear weapons programme.

Tehran's municipal council has named a street after an American activist who was crushed to death by an Israeli military bulldozer in the Gaza Strip in 2003.

An Iranian woman blinded by a spurned suitor spared her attacker the same fate moments before she was due to drip acid into both his eyes in a Tehran hospital.

No offer from world powers can persuade Iran to stop enriching uranium, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said yesterday, dismissing the key demand of countries that fear Tehran is developing nuclear weapons.

Iran has declared a cultural war with one of the world's largest museums, the Louvre in Paris, which it accuses of reneging on a promise to send part of its collection of ancient Persian artefacts to an exhibition in Tehran.

Iran is threatening to boycott the London 2012 Olympics because it claims the Games' official logo spells the word "Zion".