It was near the end of a meeting Wednesday between Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and a group of university students when the man who is Iran's highest political and spiritual authority asked if there were any other questions.  He spotted a young man in the corner with his hand raised and called on him, asking him to go to the podium to speak through the public address system.  What followed was an extraordinarily candid 20-minute speech by the student, later identified as national math Olympiad winner Mahmoud Vahidnia, in which he publicly and explicitly criticized Khamenei for the government's conduct in the unrest that followed Iran's June 12 elections.

Did President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's nominee as head of the nation's higher education system fake his university degrees? According to an investigation by a reformist website, Mowjcamp.com, Kamran Daneshjoo, Ahmadinejad's proposed minister of higher education, has lied about his academic credentials by claiming that he obtained British university degrees.

The naming of the notorious Tehran prosecutor to a new post as deputy prosecutor-general gives him a fancy title and protection from future legal action, but strips him of his power to pursue his hardline political agenda, said two Iranian lawyers.