Four today

1. Social-media networks continue to tune their tools to respond to public interest in the Iranian protests. Facebook recently launched a Persian-language site and now Google has added a Persian-to-English/English-to-Persian translator to its Google Translate function. Google

2. Jakarta correspondent Paul Watson has left the Los Angeles Times to return to the Toronto Star. LAO

3. The city of South Pasadena has found a unique way to raise revenues in this down economy. It involves the police department and a school bus. LAT *Updated: Looks like the SPPD wants to make this go away. LAT

4. Californian vs. Californian. Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Garden Grove, cast the deciding vote to squash an amendment from Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Redlands, that would have forced the federal government to keep funding the Guantanamo Bay prison. Politico

Facebook releases Persian version

Much has been made about Iranian protesters' use of social networking tools such as Twitter to communicate and organize in the wake of last week's disputed presidential election. That led Facebook to release an test version of its site in the Persian language.

From the company press release:

Since the Iranian election last week, people around the world have increasingly been sharing news and information on Facebook about the results and its aftermath. Much of the content created and shared on Facebook related to these events has been in Persian – the native language of Iran – but the users have had to navigate the site in English or other languages.

Today we’re making the entire site available in a test version of Persian, so Persian speakers inside of Iran and around the world can begin using it in their native language.

Persian was already in translation before worldwide attention turned to the Iranian elections, but because of the sudden increase in activity we decided to launch it sooner than planned. This means that the translation isn’t perfect, but we felt it was important to help more people communicate rather than wait.