Rouhani says Iran conducting nuclear talks with prudence

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U.S., Iran address
obstacles to
nuclear deal
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Iran to start building
key gas condensate
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Mahdavikia set
to appoint as
Hamburg SV U-14 coach
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Center opens in
Serbia to promote
Persian language
A R T & C U L T U R E
I N T E R N A T I O N A L D A I L Y
Velayati
advises
France to
pursue
independent
policies
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12 Pages Price 10000 Rials 37th year No.12282 Sunday MAY 31, 2015 Khordad 10, 1394 Sha’aban 12, 1436
Tehran
Auction sells
about $6.5m,
setting new
record for
Iranian art sale
Art
TEHRAN — The
D e s k 4th Tehran Auc-
Rouhani says Iran conducting
nuclear talks with prudence
TEHRAN
—
President
Political Desk Hassan Rouhani has said
that the government is conducting nuclear talks with the great powers with “prudence”.
So far great steps have been taken, however final victory has not been achieved yet,
Rouhani said in a meeting with Interior Ministry officials and governors from across the
country on Saturday.
Rouhani stated that the nuclear file is a
“national” issue and the system which is
bearing this burden is advancing the talks
step by step till the goal will be achieved.
Contd. on P. 2
tion smashed last year’s record on
Friday evening by grossing 214 billion rials (over $6.4 million).
The auction sold 130 billion rials
during its 3rd edition last year.
Like previous edition, a Sohrab
Sepehri painting from his Tree Truck
series fetched 28 billion rials (over
$845,000), setting a new record for
the Iranian art sale.
“We didn’t think that we could
organize the second edition of the
Tehran Auction and now, I am happy that the fourth edition is being
held,” auctioneer Reza Kianian,
who is also actor, said before beginning the auction at the Parsian
Azadi Hotel.
“We should be grateful to Alireza
Sami-Azar [the director of the Tehran Auction] for this,” he added.
The second most expensive
work of art sold at the auction was
another painting from Sepehri’s
Tree Truck series, which sold for 17
billion rials.
New York-based Iranian expressionist Manuchehr Yektaii’s painting
was the third top seller, going for
Contd. on P. 12
9.5 billion rials.
The NAJA
(Police)
awarded
select
soldiers on
Saturday in
the Seventh
Hazrat
Ali Akbar
(Young
Soldier)
Festival
held in the
weight-lifting
stadium of
the Azadi
sports
complex.
IAEA report is filled with legal flaws: Kamalvandi
NEWS
Nuclear talks must
not open way
for interference:
Haddad Adel
TEHRAN — Sen-
Political Desk ior Iranian MP
says the nuclear negotiations should
not open the way for foreigners’ interference in Iran’s affairs.
Speaking to clerics in the city of
Qom, Gholam-Ali Haddad Adel said
that Iran will not allow any power to
interfere with its political or military
affairs.
He further said Iran considers its
nuclear negotiators as the sons of
the nation, backing them as long as
they observe the red lines.
Western powers should know
that Iran will not exchange its independence for the “promised welfare”, Haddad Adel asserted.
Hezbollah ready
to liberate Arsal:
Sheikh Nabil
Qaouk
Hezbollah is ready to liberate the
outskirts of the Lebanese border
town of Arsal, the deputy head of
the party’s executive council said
Saturday, accusing the March 14
coalition of supporting terrorism
and inciting sectarian strife.
“The positions of the March 14
[coalition], which serve as a source
of hope for takfiri gangs don’t concern us, neither does sectarian incitement which is worse than the
terrorist occupation of the outskirts of Arsal,” Sheikh Nabil Qaouk said during a Hezbollah ceremony in south Lebanon.
“No matter how large the incitement grows, the resistance is ready
as long as there is territory occupied
[by the extremists] in the outskirts
of Arsal.”
(Source: The Daily Star)
TEHRAN — Behrouz KaPolitical Desk malvandi, the spokesman
for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran,
said on Saturday that the recent report released about Iran’s nuclear program by the
International Atomic Energy Agency director is legally flawed.
The report by Yukiya Amano, which is
supposed to be presented to and examined by the IAEA Board of Governors, is a
repetition of some past issues, demands
and “unfounded accusations”, Kamalvandi stated.
On the claim by Amano that he is unable to confirm that Iran does not have any
“undeclared” nuclear activities, Kamalvandi
said that this issue is “mutually verifiable”
within the framework of the Additional Protocol which Iran is expected to sign in case a
final nuclear deal is sealed between Iran and
the major powers.
“If we implement the Protocol one day,
it means that we provide the agency with
access and it cannot claim that there are undeclared activities. But this access is within a
defined framework,” he stated.
He added that it has been proven that
Iran’s nuclear activities are peaceful and
there is no need to reconfirm this fact.
Elsewhere in his remarks, he said that
submitting to the IAEA’s excessive demands
will lead to demands which legally fall outside the body’s jurisdiction.
He added that asking Iran to suspend its
nuclear activities is an example of repetitious demands that have never been accepted by Iran.
He went on to say that an issue that is
cited in the report is verifying Iran’s commitments to the agreements that it has
signed with the 5+1 group (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council
plus Germany) and this is something which
has been verified in this report and the
previous ones.
Yemen’s Saleh says Saudis offered him ‘millions’ to fight revolutionaries
Ansarullah delegation discusses Saudi aggression in Oman
Yemen’s ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh said in an interview
that he had rejected “millions
of dollars” that Saudi Arabia
offered him if he stood up to
the revolutionaries (Ansarullah
movement).
“They told us ‘we’ll pay you
millions of dollars if you ally
with us” against the Ansarullah
(Houthi) movement, Saleh told
the Beirut-based Al-Mayadeen
television channel, adding that
he rejected the offer.
“We will not let go of the
Houthis,” he said.
He said the former Saudi ambassador in Yemen “came to me
with a message from the kingdom
asking me to stand by (fugitive
President Abd Rabbuh Mansur)
Hadi and the Muslim Brotherhood... against the Ansarullah.”
“I told them I support national unity for all political forces in
Yemen,” he said.
“Our difference with the Houthis... was administrative, not
ideological,” he said, speaking of
his regime’s nine wars with the
Ansarullah (Houthis) movement
in their northern strongholds.
Saleh accused the Saudi kingdom of seeking to sow “sedition”
in Yemen, and said its “hatred”
for the Houthis was “sectarian”.
But “sooner or later we will hold
talks with Saudi Arabia,” he said.
Saleh himself belongs to the
Houthis’ Zaidi (Zaydis) offshoot
of Shia Islam.
The former strongman, who
ruled Yemen for three decades
before being forced out after a
year-long popular uprising, insisted: “I will not accept power
for myself or my son” Ahmed,
who led the elite Republican
Guard troops during his rule.
The interview took place in the
Yemeni capital city of capital Sana’a.
Hadi ‘is over’
The Yemen’s ex-president Ali
Abdullah Saleh went on to say that
“Abd Rabbuh Mansur is over.”
Saleh still heads Yemen’s influential political party the General People’s Congress, and many
people among country’s security
forces remain loyal to him.
In the interview, he renewed
calls for talks in Geneva between
the Yemeni parties, as well as
negotiations between Yemenis
and Saudi Arabia.
The United Nations is trying
to reschedule postponed peace
talks in Geneva between Yemeni
political forces.
A delegation of Ansarullah
(Houthi) movement was also reported to be in Oman on Thursday.
Oman, is the only one of the six
Persian Gulf Arab states that has
not joined the coalition air strikes
against its western neighbor.
The revolutionaries -controlled
Sabanews.net quoted Ansarullah movement spokesman Mohammed Abdulsalam as saying
that talks were ongoing in the
sultanate to discuss the coalition
“aggression on Yemen”, and that
there was an “exchange of views
and proposals with international
and regional parties”.
“This is taking place under
the supervision of brothers in
Oman,” said Abdulsalam.
The Saudi-led coalition has imposed a complete air and naval
blockade on impoverished Yemen.
Fresh Saudi Arabia’s air
raids leave 7 dead in Yemen
In another event, at least seven people have been killed and
several others wounded in the
latest wave of airstrikes conducted by Saudi Arabia against
Yemen.
The casualties came after
Saudi warplanes bombarded a
hospital in the Bani Hashish district of Yemen’s western province of Sana’a on Saturday.
Saudi fighter jets also demolished two houses in the Saqin
district of Sa’ada Province.
Saudi warplanes further
pounded residential areas in the
districts of al-Hamidan and Maran in Sa’ada, according to the
Yemeni al-Masirah TV network.
Meanwhile, the Lebanese
TV channel al-Manar reported
the bombing of the building of
a technical vocational center in
Heymeh in Sana’a Province.
Al-Manar further reported
that Saudi jets fired more than
100 missiles into residential
border regions of al-Malahiz,
al-Manzaleh and al-Hesameh in
Sa’ada.
According to the Arabic-language news website, Yemen
Now, Saudi warplanes repeatedly
attacked premises belonging to
Yemen’s Air Force in the northern
part of Sana’a overnight.
Al-Deylami air base in Sana’a
was also hit by four missiles,
causing an explosion in a warehouse.
(Source: agencies)
IMIS to
introduce
200 Iranian
mining
projects to
investors
TEHRAN
—
Economic Desk Over 200 mining projects will be introduced to investors at the Iran Mines and Mining
Industries Summit (IMIS), which will
be held in Tehran May 31-June 1.
Forty foreign companies from 20
countries, plus 230 Iranian companies, will participate in the two-day
event, the IRNA news agency reported on Saturday.
The British-Australian Rio Tinto Group, the Finish Outotec, the
Chinese MCC, the Italian Danielli,
and the Indian Tata Steel are among
the foreign participants.
Mehdi Karbasian,the director of
the Iranian Mines and Mining Industries Development and Renovation,
known as IMIDRO, said on May 14 that
there is a high demand for foreign investment in Iran’s mining projects, so
that many multinational companies
have put in their investment requests.
Iran is believed to hold more than
7 percent of the world’s total mineral reserves. It ranks at the 10th place
in terms of the variety of mineral resources. Key large deposits that have
still remained underdeveloped are
zinc, copper, iron, uranium, and lead.
Contd. on P. 11
NEWS
Iraq forces edge
towards Ramadi
Iraqi forces retook an area west
of Ramadi on Saturday as they
pressed their operation aimed at
sealing off the terrorists who captured the city two weeks ago, commanders said.
“The Iraqi army and the Hashed
al-Shaabi (al-Hashd al-Shaabi) liberated the Anbar traffic police building in the 5 kilometer area west of
Ramadi after a fierce fight,” an army
officer said.
Hashed al-Shaabi also known as
the Popular Mobilization Forces (
The People’s Mobilization or National Mobilization) is an umbrella for
volunteer forces that have played
a key role in Iraq’s fight against the
Islamic state in Iraq and the Levant
(ISIL) terrorist group.
“The battle forced ISIL to withdraw from the building, which they
had used as a base, and pull back
into Ramadi city,” the officer told
AFP.
Iraqi forces have launched wide
operations aimed at severing the
supply lines of the terrorists who
control most of Anbar, a vast Sunni
province in western Iraq of which
Ramadi is the capital.
“The security forces today are
tightening their stranglehold on
Ramadi, from the traffic police building to the west, from the university
to the south and from the other
sides too,” Anbar police chief Hadi
Rzayej said.
He said ordnance disposal teams
were busy removing roadside
bombs and checking buildings for
booby traps in reconquered positions on the outskirts of Ramadi.
Iraqi government and allied forces retook the southern districts of
Taesh, Humeyrah and the Anbar university compound earlier this week.
The terrorists seized Ramadi on
May 17, using an unprecedented
wave of suicide vehicle-borne bomb
attacks to force a retreat from the
forces that had managed to hold
some positions in the city for more
Contd. on P. 11
than a year.
2
I NTE R NATI O NAL DAI LY
MEDIA MONITOR
TEHRAN — Iran has condemned a recent deadly terrorist attack against Shia
worshippers in Saudi Arabia’s
Eastern Province, according
to Press TV.
All measures should be
taken to prevent such incidents
and combat those who have targeted the security and stability of
the region by provoking religious
strife, said Iran’s Foreign Ministry
spokeswoman Marziyeh Aham
on Friday.
Rouhani
issues law
to study
relocation of
capital
TEHRAN — The president
issues a law that commissions the Ministry of
Transport and Urban Development to study the possibility of moving capital out
of Tehran.
The law has already been ratified by the Majlis and the Guardian Council, the Tasnim news
agency reported on Saturday.
A council consisting of the
president or his first deputy
as the head, the director of
management and planning organization, and the minister of
transport and urban development will oversee the implementation of the law.
Interior
minister raises
voice against
unauthorized
demonstrations
TEHRAN — The Iranian minister of interior has said there is
no justification for unauthorized demonstrations in regard
to nuclear talks, urging action to
prevent such events.
Holding gatherings on issues
such as the nuclear case, which
are the subject of agreement by
the Leader, government, and nation, is unjustified, said Abdolreza
Rahmani Fazli on Saturday, IRNA
reported.
“Such issues are not addressed
on the streets or downtown. They
should rather be discussed at scientific or political gatherings in expert discourse,” he said.
‘House of
Saud will fall
in less than
10 years’
TASNIM
IRNA
MEHR
TEHRAN — An Iranian official
says the latest IAEA report
repeats previous allegations
about the so-called possible
military dimensions (PMD) to
Iran’s nuclear program.
“The latest report, when compared to earlier ones, shows the
Agency has nothing new to present concerning the implementation of the Safeguards Agreement
in Iran,” said Iran’s Ambassador to
the IAEA Reza Najafi, Mehr reported on Saturday.
He also expressed his dissatisfaction with the report for presenting unnecessary technical
details on the locations, number
and type of centrifuges, frequent
inspections, samplings and their
results.
“As has been repeated many
times, NAM is strongly opposed
to the release of the technical details but the Agency continues as
before,” he said, expressing Iran's
views as head of the Non-Aligned
Movement.
FARS
IAEA report
repeats
baseless PMD
allegations:
Iran
PRESSTV
Iran
condemns
terrorist
attack on
Saudi Shia
worshippers
TEHRAN — An Iranian human rights official says Saudi
Arabia’s attack on Yemen was
a big mistake and predicts
that the House of Saud will fall in
less than 10 years.
Speaking in an interview, Mohammad Javad Larijani, the head
of Iran’s Judiciary Human Rights
Council, said that Yemen has a high
chance to gain victory over the invading Saudi Arabia, the Fars news
agency reported on Saturday.
Dismissing the Saudi justification for attack on Yemen, he said
the House of Saud says it attacked
Yemen since the Houthi group
gained power there.
“At the time of Erbekan there
was a coup in Turkey. Should have
you attacked then?” Larijani asked
rhetorically.
In another part of his speech,
Larijani commented on U.S. position on the current situations of
Yemen.
The U.S. is afraid of the establishment of democracy in Yemen,
because if democracy is established there, the face of the entire
region will change, he stated.
N
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MAY 31, 2015
h t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m / p o l i t i c s
U.S., Iran address obstacles to nuclear deal
By staff and agencies
U
.S. Secretary of State John
Kerry met his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif on
Saturday in a bid to overcome the
remaining obstacles to a final nuclear agreement, a month ahead of a
deadline for a deal between Tehran
and world powers, Reuters reported.
The meeting in Geneva is the first
substantive talks since Iran and the
six world powers - Britain, France, the
United States, Russia, China and Germany - struck an interim deal on April 2.
Tehran wants sanctions to be rescinded immediately after a deal is
reached. The 5+1 group is, on the other hand, pushing for access to Iran’s
military sites and its team of atomic
experts.
Officials are describing the negotiating round as the most substantive
since world powers and Iran clinched
a framework pact in April, according to
The Associated Press.
A senior U.S. State Department official said there had been substantial
progress in talks in Vienna in recent
weeks on drafting a political agreement and three technical annexes on
curbing Tehran’s nuclear program.
The United States has also said it
will not extend the talks beyond the
June 30 deadline. “We really do believe
we can get it done by (June) 30th and
we’re not contemplating an extension.
We just aren’t,” the official told reporters traveling with Kerry to Geneva.
But France, which has demanded
more stringent restrictions on the Iranians, has indicated talks are likely to
slip into July. Iran’s senior nuclear negotiator Abbas Araqchi also warned
that the deadline might need to be
extended.
“We are on a good track right now
to make progress and we absolutely
believe it is possible we can get this
done by June 30,” the senior State
Department official said, adding that
Kerry’s schedule for June had been
cleared to focus on the Iran talks.
Zarif, when asked at the start of the
talks on Saturday whether the deadline
would be met, replied: “We will try.”
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei has said Tehran will not accept
“unreasonable demands” by world
powers.
“The issue of interviews with nuclear
scientists is generally off the table as
well as the inspection of military sites,”
Araqchi told reporters as he arrived for
the talks with Kerry. “How additional
protocol would be implemented is still
a matter of disagreement that we are
still talking about.”
Iran’s demand that sanctions be rescinded immediately after a deal is also
among the issues holding up a settlement as the powers have said they can
only be lifted in phases depending on
Tehran’s compliance with the terms.
President Barack Obama has used
the “snapback” mechanism as a main
defense of the proposed pact from
sharp criticism from Congress and
some American allies, AP reports.
Mark Fitzpatrick, a former State Department official now at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said an
agreement was likely sometime in July.
“The most difficult compromises
have already been made,” he said. “But
the Iranians could overplay their hand on
the incorrect assumption that Obama
needs a deal more than they do.”
Joining Kerry and Zarif in Switzerland is the U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz. American nuclear negotiator Wendy Sherman and her Iranian
counterpart Abbas Araghchi are attending, too.
Rouhani says Iran conducting nuclear talks with prudence
Contd. from P. 1
He went on to say that the negotiators are highly
professional in political, legal, and technical issues.
However, he said, the government is open to criticism.
Iran’s nuclear technology will benefit region
Rouhani also said that Iran’s access to nuclear
technology will benefit the people in Iran and the
larger Mideast region.
He added that Iran is seeking to prove to the
world that its nuclear activities are peaceful in spite
of the “claims of ill-wishers”.
The president went on to say that the Iranian nuclear negotiators are proficient and are moving on
the right path.
The president also stated that the Iranian nuclear
negotiators are among the bests and asked, “Who
has the right to talk to the commander of diplomatic
frontline with an impolite tone? Where has this impo-
liteness originated?”
The president was indirectly referring to MP Mehdi Kouchekzadeh who recently insulted Foreign
Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif who is leading the
Iranian nuclear negotiating team with the great
powers.
No support for any political group in upcoming
parliamentary polls
The president also said his government will not
support a certain party or faction in the upcoming
parliamentary elections.
The government is not a party or faction and it
just implements the law, he stated.
He went on to say that in the parliamentary elections that will be held in late winter the government
will only stick to the constitutional law.
Parliamentary leader urges unity among principlists
TEHRAN — Those
Po l i t i c a l D e s k who affiliate them-
selves to the principlist camp have no
way other than unity to serve their
country and the Islamic establishment,
the head of the principlist faction of
the parliament has stated.
Gholam Ali Haddad Adel made the
remarks on Friday as he addressed
a meeting of principlists in Kerman,
southern Iran.
The unity between different principlist
groups is gaining more momentum as
parliamentary election is approaching.
Haddad Adel, who withdrew his candidacy in the 2009 presidential election
in the final days, said the unity of principlists would serve the interest of the Islamic Revolution and would cement the
pillars of the Islamic Republic.
Being a true principlist means following the guidelines of the late founder of
the Islamic Republic Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini and obeying the orders of the
Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei, said
Hadad Adel who was parliament speaker from 2004 to 2008.
Haddad Adel, who is also a member
of the Expediency Council, quoted the
Leader of the Islamic Revolution as
saying that being a true principlist requires reliance on the God Almighty,
having Islamic manner, living an Islamic lifestyle, having interest in the
household of the prophet, being kind
to people, rendering services to the
public, and making efforts to establish
justice in the society in any form,
He added that a true principlist must be
a real believer in Supreme Jurisprudence.
Elsewhere in his remarks, the senior
MP censured the Saudi-led airstrikes
on Yemeni civilians and infrastructure.
Haddad Adel also criticized the silence
of the international community, particularly the United Nations, in the face
of the Saudi-led assault on Yemen.
Saudi Arabia started its military
campaign against Yemeni popular forces in a bid to restore power to fugitive
president Abd Raba Mansour Hadi.
Intelligence minister warns of divisive efforts to jeopardize nuclear talks
TEHRAN — The Iranian intel-
Po l i t i c a l D e s k ligence minister has warned
against efforts to create a bipolar atmosphere with
regard to the ongoing nuclear talks between Iran
and the world powers.
Addressing a number of Interior Ministry officials
on Saturday, Seyed Mahmoud Alavi said the enemies
of the country are trying to create such a bipolar atmosphere in the country to hinder the progressive
trend of nuclear talks.
Alavi also said that any security challenge posing
threat to the country should be “nipped in the bud”.
He also touched on other internal and external
issues and challenges facing the country, saying
currently Iran faces some external threats particularly efforts by the global hegemony to divide
the Islamic community into hostile Shia and Sunni
groups, example of which are the support for the
terrorist groups and the massacre of innocent
Muslim civilians by terrorists.
On internal threats posed against the country,
Alavi said presently the country sells merely 800,000
barrels of oil per day and does not even receive its
money in a timely manner. “Therefore, governing
the country is not an easy task and it is only natural
that the hands of some officials and governors are
tied in resolving some of the problems.”
He also warned against spreading baseless rumors to tarnish the image of some individuals and
government officials of the country.
Velayati advises France to pursue independent policies
TEHRAN -– France’s
Po l i t i c a l D e s k inclination towards
the policies of the U.S. would not bring
Paris honor and dignity, a senior aide
to the Leader of the Islamic Revolution
has underscored.
Ali Akbar Velayati, who is also the
head of the Strategic Research Center
of Expediency Council, called on Paris
to pursue a more independent approach concerning its international affairs, rather than pursuing “the worst
policies of the West.”
Talking to reporters on the sidelines
of a meeting with Muslim scholars
from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Velayati
underlined that the Islamic Republic
would, as always, support the rights of
the oppressed people.
He defended Tehran’s policy vis-àvis the Saudi-led aggression against
Yemen which has led to hundreds of civilian deaths and damage of the country’s infrastructure.
Velayati, a veteran politician said
the people of Yemen would turn out
to become the ultimate winners of the
Saudi attack on their country.
Those who resist foreign pressure
to determine their own destiny would
always preserve their rights, he asserted.
Mechanism for implementing Additional Protocol is a source of difference: Araqchi
TEHRAN — A senior Iranian nu-
Po l i t i c a l D e s k clear negotiator said on Saturday
that how to implement the Additional Protocol to
the NPT is one of the contentious issues between
Iran and the 5+1 group (the five permanent members
of the UN Security Council plus Germany).
“The mechanism for implementing the Additional Protocol is one of the issues of difference
which we are negotiating on,” Abbas Araqchi
told state TV on Saturday.
Abbas Araqchi said issues relating to inspection
of military sites and interview with nuclear scientists are “totally unacceptable but our negotiations
on the framework of mechanisms” for such matters
which have been mentioned in “the Additional Protocol are continuing”.
The remarks by Abbas Araqchi came as Iranian
foreign minister and his U.S. counterpart held talks
on Iran’s nuclear program in Geneva on Saturday.
Araqchi expressed hope that a solution would
be found in the one-day talks between Zarif and
Kerry.
Iran and the U.S. planned to hold talks on issues
for which no solutions have been found, he stated.
The negations between Iran and the U.S. were
held at the presence of Helga Schmid, the EU political director who represents the 5+1 group.
h t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m / i n t e r n a t i o n a l
MAY 31, 2015
INTERNATIONAL
Turkish PM dismisses Syria arms
video as election ploy
Turkey has said the release of images
allegedly showing Turkish spy agency
trucks carrying weapons into Syria early
last year was an election ploy, with the
prime minister denouncing what he
called, an “illegal action” against Turkey's interests.
An opposition Turkish daily on Friday published video footage of mortar
shells, grenade launchers and tens of
thousands of rounds of ammunition
stashed under boxes containing antibiotics and marked “fragile.”
Local security forces in January 2014
searched trucks in southern Turkey near
the Syrian border on suspicion that they
were smuggling arms into Syria and found
personnel of the Turkish National Intelligence Organization (MIT) on board.
Turkey said at the time that the vehicles were on a humanitarian mission to
the Turkmen community in Syria.
The new images prompted the opposition to question whether Ankara had
provided military support to terrorists of
the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant
(ISIL) terrorist group.
In an interview with Agence FrancePresse (AFP), Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said he could not comment fully because of “state secrecy,” but
said Turkey provided the Syrian people
and the (so-called) Free Syrian Army with
assistance, without specifying whether
the aid was of a military nature.
“I said at the time it was made up of logistical aid directed for the Turkmen community in desperate need of help ... The
aid was for the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and
the Syrian people,” he said during a visit to
the central Anatolian city of Kayseri.
“The raid on MIT trucks was an illegal
action against Turkey's interests and na-
Social media sites Twitter and Facebook, along with many other websites, have been blocked in
Turkey after anonymous accounts published new evidence in an ongoing case accusing Turkey of
illegal arms shipments to rebels in Syria, according to the Turkish daily, Today’s Zaman.
tional security ... And the release of [the
video footage] right now is an effort aimed
at affecting the elections,” he added.
“But Turkey always does and will
continue to do whatever its national security requires, and whatever responsibility it needs to shoulder for humanitarian purposes in the international arena.”
“This is our right. We will not let it be
a subject of discussion.”
Tensions are mounting in Turkey
ahead of the critical June 7 legislative
elections as the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) is seeking to maintain the dominance it has enjoyed since
coming to power in 2002.
The latest opinion polls indicate its
support could fall sharply from the almost 50 percent of the vote it garnered
in 2011 and more than 46 percent in
2007. Some voter surveys put current
support at around 40 percent.
Turkey has emerged as a key opponent of Syrian President Bashar Assad,
a onetime ally, calling for his removal
from power.
Ankara has vehemently denied arming and supporting the extremists who
are fighting the regime in Damascus as
well as a myriad rebel groups.
After international criticism and a
long delay Ankara allowed Iraqi peshmerga forces to cross the Turkish border to help defend the Syrian town of
Kobane (Ayn al-Arab) against ISIL terrorists in October.
Davutoglu told AFP that Turkey did
not send aid unilaterally to Syria.
“All the assistance is activities carried
out together with the international community in the Friends of Syria group ... and
not Turkey's unilateral aid,” he said.
Shortly after the Cumhuriyet's report, a Turkish prosecutor launched a
criminal investigation into whether the
daily breached terrorism laws by publishing the footage.
Charges include “obtaining information on state security,” “political and
military espionage” and “propaganda
for a terrorist organization.”
The main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) said the images were
“very disturbing for Turkey's prestige.”
“Those who illegally sent arms to
[Syria] have blood on their hands,” CHP
leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu told AFP on
Thursday. “Who were those weapons
bound for? Were they sent to ISIS?” he
asked, using another acronym for the
ISIL terrorist group.
The arrests of dozens of soldiers,
police and prosecutors over the inspections of the MIT vehicles has sparked
widespread controversy, notably after
leaked documents circulated on the
Internet claimed that the seized trucks
were delivering weapons to rebels fighting against the Syrian government.
The government has imposed a fullblown media blackout, including on social networks.
Ankara has claimed that the search of
the MIT trucks was carried out on the orders of the U.S.-based preacher and opposition figure Fethullah Gulen, whom
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accuses of running a parallel state through
supporters in the judiciary and police
with the aim of usurping his power.
(Source: AFP)
At least 21 killed in Pakistan as
gunmen storm buses
Turkey's AKP may lose majority
in June 7 vote: poll
Unidentified gunmen stormed two
passenger coaches in southwest Pakistan and killed at least 21 people, officials said on Saturday.
The buses were en route to the
port city of Karachi when they were
stormed in Mastung district in the
troubled province of Baluchistan late
Friday, according to Mastung deputy
district commissioner Akbar Harifal.
“The death toll has risen to 21,” Harifal told AFP.
Officials had earlier put the death
toll at 19, but one passenger later died
in hospital overnight while the dead
body of another passenger was recovered from the site of the attack.
Harifal said security forces rescued
five passengers after a firefight with the
assailants. It was unclear exactly how
many passengers were on the buses.
Baluchistan Home Minister Sarfaraz
Bugti said 15 to 20 attackers armed
with guns and other automatic rifles
were involved in the attack.
He told reporters on Saturday that a
massive search operation involving 500
ground troops and supported by four
helicopters was underway.
“Two terrorists have been killed
and the search and cordon operation
is on,” Bugti said. “We have cordoned
the attackers in a large area.”
An AFP reporter in Quetta said
around 800 relatives of the passengers
carried the victims' bodies and staged
a sit-in protest in front of the provincial
chief minister's official residence.
A recent opinion poll revealed that
Turkey’s governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) is losing its
parliamentary majority in the June 7
elections, and may have to form a coalition government.
According to the survey conducted
by the Ankara-based MetroPoll Strategic and Social Research Center, 41
percent of the respondents said they
would vote for the incumbent social
conservative political party, while 28
percent of those surveyed said they
support the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP).
The poll further put support
for the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) at 14 percent, and the leftwing and pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) at 12 percent, just
above the 10 percent threshold needed to enter parliament. Five percent of
the respondents had no idea.
Meanwhile, Turkey’s three main
opposition parties have all ruled out
the possibility of forming a coalition
government with AKP after the June
7 polls, in case the ruling party fails to
score a landslide victory and form the
government on its own.
Speaking live on private news network CNN Turk on May 27, HDP cochairman Selahattin Demirtas said his
party did not aim to form or support a
coalition with the AKP.
“We do not aim to form a coalition
with the AKP or support it from outside. We want to be a strong opposi-
The protest, which continued for
more than 10 hours, only ended after Chief Minister Abdul Malik Baloch pledged to tighten security, arrest
the attackers and raise compensation
for victims' families.
The provincial government on Saturday announced that more than one
million rupees ($9,800) as compensation for the families of each of the victims.
Quetta and surrounding areas were
tense while markets and all business
centers remained closed to protest the
killings and to express solidarity with
the families of the victims.
No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack but Baluch separatists demanding greater autonomy
have been waging an insurgency for
years and the province is also riven by
sectarian strife and extremist violence.
Rebels began their fifth insurgency
against the state in 2004, with hundreds of soldiers and militants killed in
the fighting since then.
Human rights groups allege the security forces commit abuses, accusing
them of picking up non-militant separatists - including academics and students
- torturing them and dumping their
bodies on the streets.
Resource-rich Baluchistan is the largest of Pakistan's four provinces, but its
roughly seven million inhabitants have
long complained they do not receive a
fair share of its gas and mineral wealth.
(Source: AFP)
tion,” Demirtas said.
Also on the same day, CHP leader
Kemal Kilicdaroglu said his nationalist
party could never come together with
a party, he described 'involved in corruption.'
“How could you form a coalition
with a party that has made corruption
its slogan? What will I say to those who
ask me how I joined together with
them? We have fought against corruption for all our lives, so how will
we come together with people who
are corrupt,” Kilicdaroglu told private
broadcaster NTV.
Turkey slipped into a political crisis in December 2013, when dozens
of government officials and prominent businessmen close to President
Recep Tayyip Erdogan were arrested
as part of a graft probe. Erdogan
was prime minister at the time. The
scandal, which seriously challenged
Erdogan’s grip on power, also forced
a cabinet reshuffle.
Erdogan strongly condemned the
corruption scandal as well as ensuing leaks in the media, saying they
were engineered by supporters of
his adversary, Fethullah Gulen, to
weaken his administration. Gulen
has repeatedly denied any involvement in the case.
On May 14, MHP head Devlet Bahceli also ruled out a coalition scenario
and said he aimed to secure power as
a single party.
(Source: Press TV)
Over 4,200 migrants rescued in Mediterranean as crisis grows
More than 4,200 migrants trying to reach Europe have been rescued from boats in the Mediterranean in the last 24 hours, the Italian coastguard
said on Saturday.
In some of the most intense Mediterranean migrant traffic of the year, a total of 4,243 people have
been saved from fishing boats and rubber dinghies in
22 operations involving ships from nations including
Italy, Ireland, Germany, Belgium and Britain.
On Friday the Italian navy said 17 dead bodies had
been found on one of the boats off Libya. Details of
the nationalities of the victims and how they died
have not yet been released.
Migrants escaping war and poverty in Africa and
the Middle East this year have been pouring into
Italy, which has been bearing the brunt of Mediterranean rescue operations. Most depart from the coast
of Libya, which has descended into anarchy since
Western powers backed a 2011 revolt that ousted
Muammar Gaddafi.
Calm seas are increasingly favoring departures as
warm spring weather sets in.
Last month around 800 migrants drowned off Libya in the Mediterranean's most deadly shipwreck in
living memory when their 20-metre long fishing boat
capsized and sank.
That spurred the European Union (EU) to agree
on a naval mission to target gangs smuggling migrants from Libya, but a broader plan to deal with
the influx is in doubt due to a dispute over national
quotas for housing asylum seekers.
Around 35,500 migrants arrived in Italy from the
beginning of the year up to the first week of May, the
United Nations refugee agency estimated, a number
which has swelled considerably since. About 1,800
are either dead or missing.
Most of those rescued on Friday and Saturday are
expected to reach ports around southern Italy during the weekend. The British naval vessel HMS Bulwark offloaded more than 740 early on Saturday at
the southeastern Italian port of Taranto.
European Union authorities have pressed member states to share the burden of housing refugees
more fairly through a resettlement quota system.
However, an EU plan to disperse 40,000 migrants
from Italy and Greece to other countries met with
resistance this week. Britain said it would not participate and some eastern states called for a voluntary
scheme.
(Source: Reuters)
INTERNATIONAL DAILY
3
Ukraine president
appoints ex-Georgia
leader Saakashvili
regional governor
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on Saturday appointed fiercely pro-Western former Georgian leader
Mikheil Saakashvili, who once fought a war with Russia,
governor of the strategic Odessa region.
Poroshenko made the
announcement at a televised event in the Black Sea
port alongside Saakashvili,
calling the former Georgian
president a “great friend of
Ukraine.”
“There remain a large
number of problems in
Odessa: preserving sovereignty, territorial integrity,
independence and peace,”
Poroshenko said.
The controversial announcement of the flamboyant Saakashvili as head
of the southern coastal region is a pointed signal from Kiev
to Moscow that it remains set on its pro-European course
despite a bloody separatist conflict in the east blamed on
the Kremlin.
During his time at the helm in Georgia, reformist
Saakashvili, 47, became an arch-nemesis of the Russian
leadership as he dragged his tiny ex-Soviet homeland out
of Moscow's orbit and closer to the West after taking power in a popular revolution in 2003.
(Source: Reuters)
16 militants killed
in Afghan air force
attack in Farah
At least 16 militants have been killed in airstrikes by Afghanistan’s air force in the western province of Farah,
Press TV reports.
According to the Press TV correspondent quoting Afghan authorities, the slain militants were affiliated with
the Taliban militants and the Islamic State in Iraq and the
Levant (ISIL) Takfiri terrorists.
Hanif Rezaye, a spokesman for the Afghan National
Army (ANA) in Farah, stated that the militants’ positions
were targeted in Sar Gazan, Gul Shotor, Dahan-e-Jamal
Ghani and Dahan-e-Kashkanak areas of the province.
Five vehicles used by the militants were also destroyed
in the Saturday offensive, Rezaye added.
The ISIL terrorists, who are already actively operating
in countries like Syria, Iraq and Libya, have been looking to
expand presence.
The terrorists reportedly seek to turn Afghanistan’s
Anar Dara district in Farah into one of their strongholds
in the violence-wracked country, according to the Afghan
news agency, Khaama Press.
The militants intended to strike religious sites in the
nearby province of Herat before they were targeted in the
Saturday airstrikes, Press TV's correspondent said.
Elements affiliated with ISIL have launched an extensive propaganda campaign in a bid to lure the youth in
Afghanistan, and Pakistan, into joining the ranks of the
Takfiri terrorist group.
Reports of ISIL’s ambitions for strongholds in Afghanistan come at a time that over 13,500 foreign forces, mostly
from the U.S., are still in the country in what is called a support mission.
(Source: Press TV)
89 European politicians,
military leaders banned
from Russia
Russia has imposed an entry ban on 89 European politicians and military leaders, in a move that has angered Europe and worsened the country’s standoff with the west
over the Ukraine conflict.
The list, which includes former Deputy Prime Minister Nick
Clegg and former Defense Secretary Sir Malcolm Riind,
was reportedly compiled by the Russian foreign ministry and
handed to an EU delegation in Moscow this week.
It is a sign of Russia’s deteriorating relations with the
west after more than 6,200 people have been killed in
fighting between Ukrainian government forces and proRussian separatists.
Russia continues to dismiss accusations from Ukraine,
NATO and western powers that it is supporting the separatists with arms and its own troops.
Since Crimea joined Russia in March 2014, the EU has imposed economic sanctions, visa bans and asset freezes on
scores of Russian and Ukrainian citizens and organizations.
A spokesperson for EU foreign affairs said in recent
months Russia had denied entry to a number of EU politicians, based on their inclusion on a “confidential stop list”.
“We take note that the Russian authorities have decided
to share the list. We don’t have any other information on legal
basis, criteria and process,” the spokesperson said.
Asked about the list while on a visit to Ukraine, the
German foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, said it
would hamper peace efforts. “At a time in which we are
trying to defuse a persistent and dangerous conflict, this
does not contribute towards that,” Steinmeier said.
(Source: The Guardian)
4
I NTE R NATI O NAL DAI LY
E C O N O M Y
MAY 31, 2015
h t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m / e c o n o m y
World’s prominent hotel owners to
explore Iran investment opportunities
NEWS
Iran to start building
key gas condensate
refinery in weeks
TEHRAN — Iran will launch the large
Economic Desk Siraf refinery project in the second half
of the third Iranian calendar month of Khordad (June
5-June 21), according to Alireza Sadeqabadi, the managing
director of Siraf Refineries Infrastructure Company.
Sadeqabadi said the project, which includes
construction of eight gas condensate refineries, will be
launched in the presence of Iranian First Vice President
Es’haq Jahangiri, the IRNA news agency reported on
Saturday.
Siraf refinery in the coastal city of Assaluyeh near
the South Pars offshore gas field is projected to have
the output of 480,000 barrels per day (bpd) of gas
condensate.
Iran, which sits on the world's largest natural gas
reserves, has been trying to enhance its gas production
by attracting foreign and domestic investment, especially
in its supergiant offshore South Pars gas field.
The South Pars gas field, which Iran shares with Qatar
in the Persian Gulf, contains significant amounts of gas
and condensate.
Sales of condensate from South Pars supplement Iran’s
crude oil exports, which are constrained by international
sanctions. Condensate exports face no such constraints
so long as they go to buyers permitted under U.S.
sanctions to purchase Iranian crude. Sales of condensate
doubled last year to about 200,000 bpd and contributed
to total Iranian oil shipments in April of about 1.3 million
bpd, according to the International Energy Agency.
Iran is negotiating with six world powers to end a
dispute over its nuclear program with an accord that
would remove the curbs on its oil and financial industries.
Unclear rules, market
volatility take toll on bank
capital in Europe
LONDON (Reuters) — The rate at which European
banks raised subordinated capital plummeted in the first
five months of the year as they struggle to navigate a
treacherous regulatory framework and market.
It is a blow to those who expected banks to quickly
build up an additional layer of loss-absorbing capacity
(TLAC) to meet new global proposed requirements.
However, since the start of the year, European banks
have printed less than 13bn-equivalent of Tier 2 in euros,
sterling and US dollars, a decrease of more than 55%
versus 2014's volumes for the same period according to
IFR data.
"While the picture on regulatory requirements has
been very clear as far as Additional Tier 1 is concerned, it is
unfortunately a lot less clear on Tier 2 given pending bailin specifications," said Marcus Schulte, head of financial
institutions debt capital markets at Credit Suisse.
Under current proposals by the Financial Stability
Board, the TLAC buffer must be composed of securities
that are junior to all excluded liabilities - on a contractual,
statutory or structural basis.
TEHRAN
—
Some
world’s
Economic Desk prominent hotel owners are
planning to visit Iran soon to study the condition
for making investment in the country’s hotel
building and hospitality industry, Mohammadreza
Sabzalipour, the head of Iran’s World Trade
Center, stated.
He said after Iran and the P5+1 group of countries
agreed to finalize a comprehensive deal on Tehran’s
nuclear program by the end of June, directors of the
world’s large hospitality companies have adopted an
optimistic approach toward investment making in Iran,
the Tasnim News Agency reported on Saturday.
Some of these directors have already started
negotiations with directors of Iran’s World Trade
Center for construction and rebuild of hotels as well as
promotion of hospitality management industry in Iran,
Sabzalipour stated.
He did not mention names and nationalities of the
companies.
Iran has the capacity to offer services to 2-3 million
foreign tourists per year, he said, adding that tourism
industry could take the second place after the oil industry
in Iran to bring foreign currency income to the country.
On May 12, Iran’s Cultural Heritage, Tourism and
Handicrafts Organization’s Director Masoud Soltanifar
told the country’s annual income from tourism industry
reached over $7 billion by hosting more than five million
foreign tourists in the past Iranian calendar year (which
ended on March 20).
Iran is expected to reach over $30 billion annual
income in the Iranian calendar year 1404 (2025) by
hosting more than 20 million tourists, he added.
Iran’s car imports fall 59.3% in two
months
TEHRAN — Iran
Economic Desk imported $112.9
million worth of cars in the first
two months of the current Iranian
calendar year (March 21- May 21),
a 59.38 percent fall from $277.98
million in the same time last year.
The country imported 4,231 cars
in the mentioned two months,
with 66 percent drop from 12,767
cars in the same period of time in
the previous year, the Mehr News
agency reported on Saturday.
The automobile industry is seen
as Iran’s biggest non-oil sector.
It accounts for nearly 10 percent
of the country’s gross domestic
product (GDP).
Latest data shows that Iran
ranks 18th on the list of the world’s
top auto manufacturers.
The 2014 Production Statistics
by the International Organization
of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers
(OICA)
indicate
Iran’s
auto
production increased by 46.7
percent in the 12-month period.
Western automakers prepare to
re-enter Iran’s car market after the
removal of international sanctions.
Earlier,
European
car-makers
voiced an interest to resume their
activity in the Islamic Republic’s
auto industry.
PICTURE OF THE DAY
According to Travel and Tourism Competitiveness
Report 2015 conducted by the World Economic Forum
(WEF), Iran is the most affordable country for tourists
amongst the 141 countries.
China’s April services trade deficit
widens to $17.3 billion
BEIJING (Reuters) — China posted
a wider $17.3 billion deficit on
trade in services in April, led by
a $15.6 billion gap in tourism as
more Chinese travel overseas, the
foreign exchange regulator said.
China had a surplus of $31.1 billion
on trade in goods in April, giving a
combined surplus on trade in goods
and services of $13.8 billion, the State
Administration of Foreign Exchange
said.
No comparative figures were given.
In March, the services sector had a
deficit of $15 billion.
Chinese leaders have promised to
open up the largely sheltered service
JPMorgan
to lay off 5,000
employees
across firm
By Abbas Takin
TEHRAN STOCK EXCHANGE
Index
Value
Main Board
Change
45720.1
Percent
-6.2
-0.01
Index
Industry Index
52218.9
10.9
0.02
Overall Index
63419.9
17.8
0.03
Free Float Index
72637.2
2.9
0
Secondary Index
131097.9
154.9
0.12
OVERALL INDEX DETAILS
First
63402.1
Max Value
63528.9
Min Value
63419.3
Closing
63419.9
Variety
17.8
Iranian Industry, Mining, and Trade Minister Mohammad Reza Ne’matzadeh paid a visit to the 22nd international exhibition on food, food technology,
and agriculture of Iran (Iran AgroFood 2015), which was held on May 26-29 at the Tehran Permanent International Fairgrounds, with the participation
of more than 700 Iranian companies and 235 foreign companies.
Change end of year(%)
696.08%
Historical highest
89500.6 (2014/01/05)
Source: tse.ir
Currency
To U.S.
Dollars
To IR.
Rial*
Currency
To U.S.
Dollars
To IR.
Rial*
US dollar
1
33100
UAE dirham
0.272
9040
British Pound
1.539
51100
EURO
1.088
36480
*The free market rates
(Sources: Mehrnews.com & xe.com)
MAJOR COMMODITIES
Light Crude $ / barrel
58.03
Silver $ / troy ounce
Gold $ / troy ounce
1,186.90 Platinum $ / troy ounce
Copper $ / pound
2.78
Wheat ¢ / bushel
16.75
1,124.10
492.75
Source: cnnmoney.com
NEWS IN BRIEF
MAJOR CURRENCIES
EU threatens
11 members
with court
if they
fail bank
recovery
program
The first four months
of 2015 showed a 64
percent fall in RussianUkrainian bilateral
trade, according to a
World Trade Center
(WTC) Moscow report.
Some spheres of
cooperation were
totally devastated.
Russian exports to
Ukraine in JanuaryApril 2015 in monetary
terms amounted to
$2.964 billion compared
to $8.123 billion in the
same period last year,
said the report prepared
for RBC published
Wednesday.
Gazprom to
demand more
than $8bn
from Ukraine
in ‘take-orpay’ contract
penalties
sector wider to foreign firms to help
bolster the sector's competitiveness,
but the process has been gradual.
The government has been trying
to boost the services sector to create
more jobs at a time when factories
are struggling, but analysts warn
that clumsy attempts to force the
transition could do more harm than
good.
For the first four months, China
had a deficit of $58.5 in services
trade and a surplus of $148.9 billion
on trade in goods, producing a
combined surplus on trade in goods
and services of about $90.5 billion,
the data showed.
Russia’s Gazprom wants
Ukraine’s Naftogaz to
pay penalties for taking
less than the agreed upon
amount of gas in 2014,
considering the so-called
“take-or-pay” contract
signed by the companies.
Gazprom would require
Naftogaz of Ukraine
to pay $8.197 billion in
“take-or-pay” contract
penalties, said company
head Aleksey Miller at
the European Business
Congress.
Russian natural gas
producer also put
Ukraine’s total gas debt
at almost $29.5 billion.
NEW YORK (AP) — JPMorgan Chase
& Co. will cut about 5,000 jobs over
the next year, as the bank closes
branches and slims down its operations, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing anonymous sources.
A representative for the New
York bank declined to comment.
The job cuts will come from
across the bank, but particularly
from the consumer bank. JPMorgan
CEO Jamie Dimon, at an investor
conference this week, said that the
average Chase branch would lose
one employee — mostly through attrition.
JPMorgan executives said in February that they expected to have
300 fewer branches over the next
two years — roughly 5 percent of
its network — because more customers were doing everyday banking transactions online or on their
smartphones. The bank had 5,570
branches as of the first quarter.
BRICS
summit in
Russia to
launch New
Development
Bank &
currency
pool
Russia expects to launch
the $100-billion BRICS New
Development Bank along
with a currency reserve
pool worth another $100
billion at the July summit in
Ufa, said Russian President
Vladimir Putin.
“We expect to reach
agreement in Ufa on
the launch of practical
operations of the BRICS
Bank and a pool of
currency reserves,” Putin
said. Putin recalled that the
BRICS was created in 2006
under Russia’s initiative,
and that the group “has
already become an
influential factor in world
policy and economy.”
MAY 31, 2015
h t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m
HISTORY & HERITAGE
Iran , Croatia to
boost ties in tourism industry
TEHRAN — Iran and
Heritage D e s k Croatia signed an
agreement to expand bilateral ties in
the tourism industry.
The director of Iran’s Cultural Heritage Tourism and Handicrafts Organization (CHTHO) Masud Soltanifar and
Croatia’s Minister of Tourism Darko
Lorencin signed the agreement on Friday in Rovinj, Croatia.
Soltanifar travelled to Croatia to
take part at the 100th session of the
Executive Council of United Nations
World Tourism Organization (UNWTO)
from May 27 to 29.
The event was attended by 300 representatives of tourism ministries from
all around the world.
The council takes all necessary
measures, in consultation with the Secretary-general, for the implementation
of its own decisions and recommendations of the assembly.
According to the agreement, two
committees will be established in Iran
and Croatia to follow cooperation.
“Iran plans to attract over 20 million
tourists by 2025,” Soltanifar said.
He urged Croatia to share with Iran
their experience in the field.
Iran’s annual income from the tourism industry reached over $7 billion by
hosting over five million foreign visi-
tors, Soltanifar previously announced.
At the meeting, Lorencin expressed
his gratitude over the attendance of the
Iranian delegation at the UNWTO session.
“Regarding the increasing number
of tourist in Iran and the potential of the
country, I think it is possible for the country to reach its aim by 2025,” Lorencin said.
Lorencin travelled to Tehran last
Some history’s greatest cities
month and had several meetings with
Iranian officials to discuss expansions
in the relations of tourism between
two countries.
Soltanifar also paid a visit to the Croatian Parliament Speaker Josip Leko
on Wednesday and highlighted the
cultural and tourist attractions of two
countries, which may strengthen ties
People have always thronged to centers of civilization, commerce and culture. But which were the most important in their day?
Art, literature and philosophy all
flourished in Ancient Greece. But perhaps the greatest achievement of this
influential culture evolved in Athens:
democracy, from the Greek demos
kratos – people power.
After the city’s people revolted
against the harsh aristocratic regime,
reforms introduced by Cleisthenes
around 508 BC enabled each adult
male Athenian citizen to contribute to
the rule of the city.
Baghdad: Eighth century
Founded in AD 762 by the Abbasid
caliph al-Mansur as his capital, Baghdad soon became the intellectual focal point of the Islamic Golden Age
– the centre of global thinking. This
circular city included parks and gardens as well as a central mosque.
The House of Wisdom, built by caliph Harun al-Rashid in the late eighth
century, attracted philosophers and
scholars, writers and mathematicians
to debate, create and share ideas, and
within 50 years had become the largest repository of books in the world.
Uruk: Fourth millennium BC
The greatest city you never heard
of is probably the earliest large urban
settlement on Earth. In the fertile region of Mesopotamia, between the
Tigris and Euphrates Rivers (in modern-day Iraq), the burgeoning Sumer-
Safavids: Important patrons
of Iranian art
Must-see museums of the world
ancient
Baghdad
ian civilisation developed writing, the
wheel and war.
By 3000 BC, Uruk was the world’s
biggest city, with a population of some
50,000. A change in the course of the
Euphrates saw it abandoned by AD 700.
London: 19th century
‘Londinium’ first became an important settlement during Roman times.
Over the centuries, its fortunes rose
and fell, but between the Viking and
Norman invasions, great expansion
saw it become England’s capital.
By the 1830s, it had become the
planet’s largest city and would remain
so until after World War I. The onetime centre of Britain’s vast empire
has been devastated by fire, plague
and bombing over the centuries but
today it remains the world’s mostvisited city.
Hangzhou: 13th-15th centuries
This lakeside city is known as ‘Paradise on Earth’ thanks to a glowing review by Venetian merchant Marco Polo,
after he visited in 1290. He marveled at
the bustling, sophisticated hub.
During the Southern Song Dynasty
(1127-1279), the city had flourished
and, by the time the European arrived,
at least 1 million people were spilling
out of its walls. It was ten times the
size of Venice.
Later, the Ming Dynasty (13681644) saw Hangzhou become China’s
silk capital, ensuring its wealth and
prosperity for centuries.
(Source: History Extra)
The Louvre,
Paris
The Louvre (Paris)
There are always long lines at the
door but it’s worth the wait to see
the world’s greatest and most famous museum. Leonardo Da Vinci’s
Mona Lisa is the star, but there are
literally thousands of other treasures
of human civilization, from Egypt,
Asia, ancient Greece and Rome.
The Hermitage (St. Petersburg)
This gigantic museum has the
world’s largest collection of paintings. It’s a stunning place, covering
the history of the world from the
Stone Age to present times, and especially impressive are the Golden
Rooms with their golden gems.
The British Museum (London)
This museum has millions of
works of art from all over the
world. Its galleries are devoted to
Egypt, Greece, Roman civilization,
Asia, Africa, and medieval Europe,
tracing human history and culture.
The highlight is the Elgin Marbles
that once decorated the Parthenon
in Athens.
The Egyptian Museum (Cairo)
As you’d expect, here you’ll find
the most complete collection of
Egyptian art in the world. Among
the thousands of treasures (which
includes the popular Mummy Room)
are the famous artifacts from Tutankhamun’s tomb.
Uffizi (Florence)
This 16th century palace holds
hundreds of masterpieces, including
5
H I S T O R Y
between Iran and Croatia.
Several Croatian private tourism
activists met Soltanifar on Thursday
and discussed investments in building
hotels, foreign airlines and human resources training in Iran.
According to the Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report 2015 conducted by the World Economic Forum
(WEF), Iran is one of the most affordable countries for tourists amongst a
list of 141 countries.
Egypt appeared in second place
while Indonesia was next. Price Competitiveness in the Tourism and Travel
Industry related costs related to travel
in a country increase its attractiveness
for many travelers as well as for investing in the T&T sector.
Iran is home to some of the world’s
most magnificent historical and archaeological sites. Relics of a proud
ancient civilization include: Persepolis, the capital of the largest empire
that the world has ever seen; the city
of Isfahan; Shiraz, the city of love and
poetry; and Hamadan, where Avicenna, the father of early modern medicine, is buried.
UNESCO has declared 16 world heritage sites in Iran, which was historically
referred to as Persia in the west until
the 20th century.
CHTHO Dirctor Soltanifar (L) and Croatia’s Minister of Tourism Lorencin ( R ) sign an agreement to
expand bilateral ties in the tourism industry in Rovinj, Croatia, on Friday (Photo:IRNA)
INTERNATIONAL DAILY
marvelous Renaissance sculptures
and Botticelli’s famous Birth of Venus, among other much-recognized
masterworks of the Renaissance.
The MET (New York)
A truly outstanding museum with
everything from Islamic, Egyptian,
Greek, and Indian art to European
paintings. It holds more than 2 million works from around the world,
from pre-history to the 21st century.
MOMA (New York)
This is the most important modern art museum in the world. It covers the late 19th century to the present day, with highlights including
Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon or
Van Gogh’s Starry night.
The Vatican Museums (Rome)
It’s a series of exhibition spaces
filled with priceless treasures that
blow visitors away by their grandeur
and beauty. The highlight is Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel.
The Prado (Madrid)
This treasure trove includes sculptures and drawing but the strongest
collection is, naturally, of Spanish
masterpieces by Goya, El Greco and
Velazquez (whose Las Meninas is the
best-known work of the museum).
Archaeology Museum (Athens)
This is the place to admire the
masterpieces of ancient Greece.
Its unrivaled collection includes a
bronze Artemision Podeidon from
the 5th century B.C.
(Source: ucityguides.com)
The Safavids continued to be important patrons of the arts
under Shah Abbas (1587–1629). Among the artists of his time
was Reza Abbasi (ca. 1565–1635), son of the court painter Ali
Asghar and pupil of the well-known Mucin.
Although he was heir to a very traditional form of painting, Reza introduced a new set of subjects to the Persian
oeuvre (50.164). His work
set the tone for much of the
seventeenth century, as his
students used it as a springboard for developing their
own styles (1974.290.43).
Carpet weaving was
transformed from a craft
practiced by nomads and
peasants into a national industry, with designs drafted
by professional artists in the
court workshops.
The role of Iran as a major
participant in a larger economy created by the European
commercial expansion of Bottle, Safavid period (1501–1722),
the sixteenth century was 17th century, Iran
another influence in the arts of this era.
The production of artistic goods became hugely profitable
and Abbas had a large hand in encouraging the growth of local
crafts. In pottery, imitations of ceramics from Iznik in Turkey and
of blue-and-white ware from China were especially popular, and
the native technique of lusterware was revived (30.95.158).
Carpet weaving was transformed from a craft practiced
by nomads and peasants into a national industry, with designs drafted by professional artists in the court workshops
(50.190.1). Many Persian carpets can be found in collections
throughout Europe as they became status symbols. Fabrics
were another major industry; travelers Jean Chardin and JeanBaptiste Tavernier both described silk-weaving factories in
the cities of Yazd and Kashan, and the production of velvet
increased as it became highly fashionable (59.58).
In the seventeenth century, adventurous traders and ambassadors sent by foreign kings came to Iran bearing works
of art as presents to Persian high officials. The many prints, illustrated books, and oil paintings they brought provided new
inspiration for artists in Iran.
Modeling, foreshortening, spatial recession, and the medium of oil painting were all adopted by Persian artists but were
employed in depictions of familiar subjects or in combination
with traditional conventions.
Another effect of the economic boom was the creation of
a new class of patrons. The urban rich, Armenian merchants,
foreign travelers, and artists interested in each other's works
could now all afford to purchase art. As a result, single-page
paintings, less costly than fully illustrated manuscripts, became popular. In addition, artists were no longer dependent
on the royal workshop for employment.
After Abbas I, the Safavids continued as patrons, but on a
reduced scale. Abbas II (1642–66) added the Chehel Sutun, a
pavilion with large-scale wall paintings of historical and literary subjects, to the royal complex in Isfahan.
Sulayman (r. 1666—94) commissioned two further palaces,
the Hasht Bihisht and the Talar-i Ashraf. The great days of Safavid
art were over, however, and Iran was heading in new directions.
(Source: metmuseum.org)
O N T H I S D AY
1279 Rameses II (The Great) (19th dynasty) becomes pharaoh of
BC Ancient Egypt.
70
Rome captures 1st wall of the city of Jerusalem
1223 Mongol invasion of the Cumans: Battle of the Kalka River
1621 Sir Francis Bacon thrown into Tower of London for one night
1659 Netherlands, England & France sign Treaty of The Hague
1790 U.S. copyright law enacted
1879 1st electric railway opens at Berlin Trades Exposition
1900 British troops under Lord Roberts occupy Johannesburg
1910 Cape of Good Hope becomes part of Union of South Africa
1924 China recognizes the USSR
1926 Portuguese president Bernardino Machedo resigns after coup
Consulate of Pakistan
Khayaban-e-Shaheed Mutahri - Zahidan
TENDER NOTICE
The Consulate of Pakistan in Zahidan intends to purchase two vehicles
of latest model i.e. 2015. All interested parties are invited to submit
their offers (for 2000 cc, 2500 cc and 2700 cc cars/jeeps) model 2015 in
sealed envelops between 0900 to 1500 hours on working days earlier
on or before 02 June 2015 along with their companies resume and
dealership certificates.
Tender will be opened on 3 June 2015 at 1200 hours (Iranian Time)
For further information:
Mr. Muhammad Anwar, Secretary to Consul
Consulate of Pakistan in Zahidan,
Khayaban Shaheed Mutahari, Zahidan Postal Code: 9815613146
Tel: 054 33223389
Fax: 054 33223666
Who was the first archaeologist?
Antiquarian investigators such as Cyriacus of Ancona (1391-1452), Flavio Biondo (1392-1463), John Leyland (15061552) and William Camden (1551-1623)
began to take an interest in ancient
earthworks and the buildings around
them.
Long before this, however, was Flavia Julia Helena Augusta – who lived in
the third century – mother of the Emperor Constantine the Great, and an
important figure in the early history of
Christianity (where she is remembered
as Saint Helena).
She had overseen fieldwork in Je-
rusalem, searching for evidence of the
life and death of Jesus. As a consequence of these excavations, Helena is
sometimes called the ‘mother’ (or patron saint) of archaeology.
Earlier still, the Babylonian King Nabonidus, who reigned in the mid-sixth
century BC, may be thought of as the
‘father’ of archaeology. His excavation and subsequent restoration of ancestral tombs and buildings in Sippar
(Iraq) and Harran (Turkey) are the first
known attempts to unearth and understand the past.
(Source: History Extra)
Premier Winston Churchill flies to Paris to meet with
1940 Marshal August Pétain who announces he is willing to
make a separate peace with Germany
1944 Allied breakthrough in Italy
1947 Communists grab power in Hungary
1969 John Lennon & Yoko Ono record “Give Peace a Chance”
1977
Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani becomes heir apparent to throne
of Qatar
2004
“Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” released in UK
cinemas
2014
Psy's “Gangnam Style” becomes the first video to reach 2
billion views on YouTube
6
I NTE R NATI O NAL DAI LY
INTERNATIONAL
MAY 31, 2015
h t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m / i n t e r n a t i o n a l
Burundi’s fragile peace can still unravel
Apart from the flow of refugees, the crisis in Burundi remains containable - for now
By Solomon Dersso
A
month has passed since the outbreak of the ongoing instability
in Burundi. Anti-government protests have become a regular occurrence in the Central African country’s capital, Bujumbura.
With confrontation between protesters and the police further en-
trenching the crisis, led by Major General Godefroid Niyombare, a faction
of the army staged a coup on May 14,
albeit lasting for only one day.
Yet, the conditions that precipitated the coup persist. The opposition against President Pierre Nkuruniza’s bid for a third term in office
and the ensuing political instability
that rocked Burundi’s capital Bujum-
Opposition demonstrators confront army soldiers in Bujumbura, Burundi. (file photo)
bura since the end of April remain
unresolved. If anything the contestation and most notably the political
crisis have been further deepening,
although its scale remains limited.
Having survived the coup, Nkuruniza seems bent on continuing
with his plan to run for a third term.
The coup has shaken his government. The government’s sense of
security has suffered a blow and not
unexpectedly it feels wounded. It appears to be determined to fight back.
The opposition and civil society
organizations involved in the precoup protests against the president remain defiant and opposed
to Nkurizinza’s third term. They resumed protests on May 18.
Contd. on P. 11
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h t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m / e c o n o m y
MAY 31, 2015
WORLD
ECONOMY
Financial vulnerability haunts
U.S. families after crisis
Five years after the recession ended, many
Americans still teeter on the financial brink, barely
prepared to handle an emergency expense and
aging toward retirements they haven’t saved for,
a Federal Reserve report shows.
About 47 percent of 5,896 respondents in
the Fed’s 2014 household survey, taken last
October and November, wouldn’t be able to
cover an emergency $400 expense without selling
something or borrowing money. While that marks
an improvement from 52 percent last year, the
report states that it shows many Americans to be
“ill-prepared for a financial disruption.”
The survey paints an image of fragile
households, seemingly at odds with climbing
consumer confidence and a healing economy. The
findings demonstrate that the hangover from the
financial crisis and downturn of 2007 to 2009 still
weighs heavily on family balance sheets.
“We are failing as an economy if we have a huge
swath of American households who can’t come
up with $400,” said Josh Bivens, research and
policy director at the Economic Policy Institute in
Washington. “The really dire financial situations”
of many survey respondents can be largely
attributed to “the fact that we’re still far from fully
recovered from the Great Recession.”
The report comes two weeks before Fed
officials meet to continue the debate over when
the economy will be healthy enough for the first
interest-rate increase since 2006.
On the whole, the report’s authors say
Americans are better off than they were a year
earlier, pointing to a 3 percentage- point gain in
the share of respondents who said their families
are “doing okay” or “living comfortably.”
For most households, that represents “only
mild improvements in their overall well-being,”
the report’s authors say. Long-term problems
persist. About 31 percent of non- retirees have no
retirement savings or pension, according to the
report, including one-quarter of people over the
age of 45. About 28 percent of people who plan
to retire and gave an expected retirement age said
they will work to age 70 or later.
In a sign that underemployment persists in the
economy, the survey found that 36 percent of
working respondents who aren’t self-employed
said they’d prefer to work more hours at their
current wage. Among those who work part time,
the share is even higher at 49 percent.
Underemployment and lack of preparation
for emergency or retirement expenses aren’t the
sole signs of economic vulnerability in the report:
Nearly a third of respondents had to forgo some
medical treatment in the past year because they
couldn’t afford it, for instance. One-sixth of people
were denied credit, offered less credit than they
wanted or didn’t apply for credit for fear of being
denied.
“The findings in this survey highlight that
economic challenges remain for a significant
portion of the population,” the report states.
“Although the U.S. economy is recovering from
the Great Recession and most individuals appear
to be generally stable financially, there are clearly
segments of the population who are still struggling
on one or more dimensions.”
In one especially clear sign of the downturn’s
scarring, 14 percent of mortgage holders reported
owing more than what their home is worth. People
in the West were most likely to be underwater on
their mortgages, at 17 percent, while people in the
Northeast were least likely, at 11 percent.
What’s more, renters who wanted to own were
encountering financial barriers that prevented
them from buying. Some 81 percent of renters
indicate that they would prefer to own their home
if they could afford to buy one, yet 50 percent
can’t afford a down payment and 31 percent said
they couldn’t qualify for a mortgage.
“The survey results highlight the need to
continue to monitor” populations that could
experience economic hardship if they came
across financial or economic disruption, the
report states, and to “assess the extent to which
they are, or are not, benefiting from broader
economic recovery.”
(Source: Bloomberg)
U.S. jobless aid applications on rise
WASHINGTON (WSJ) — The number
of Americans filing new claims for
jobless benefits rose last week, but
the level remains consistent with an
economy that is adding jobs.
Initial jobless claims, a proxy for
layoffs across the U.S. economy,
increased by 7,000 to a seasonally
adjusted 282,000 in the week ended
May 23, the Labor Department said.
“On balance, this week’s uptick in
initial and continuing claims comes
off of historically low levels and
labor market separations remain
healthy,” Barclays economist Jesse
Hurwitz said in a note to clients.
Economists surveyed by The Wall
Street Journal had expected 272,000
new claims last week.
The level of claims for the prior
week was raised to 275,000 from an
initially reported 274,000.
The Labor Department said no
special factors affected the latest
claims data.
Data on jobless claims can be
volatile from week to week, but
have been generally falling since
2009 and over the last month fell
to the lowest level in 15 years. The
four-week moving average for initial
claims, which evens out weekly
volatility, rose by 5,000 to 271,500
last week.
“The very recent figures have
not been as favorable as the data
reported at the end of April and
early on in May,” J.P. Morgan Chase
economist Daniel Silver said in a note
to clients. “But the trend in the data
still appears to be fairly upbeat.”
Low jobless claims can be a
sign of health in the labor market.
Hiring slowed sharply in March,
but rebounded in April when U.S.
employers added 223,000 jobs and
the jobless rate ticked down to
5.4%, according to separate Labor
Department data.
The April jobs report offered hope
after weeks of worrisome economic
readings. Many economists now
expect the economy contracted in
the first quarter and forecasts for
a spring rebound hinge largely on
continued hiring and a pickup in
consumer spending.
Last week was the 12th straight
week with fewer than 300,000
initial claims filed. Those figures are
consistent with payrolls growing
by more than 250,000, and surveys
suggest hiring is even stronger,
Pantheon Macroeconomics Chief
Economist Ian Shepherdson said in a
note to clients.
“Businesses seem to have been
even less worried about the weak
first-quarter GDP numbers than us,”
he said.
The report showed the number of
people filing continuing claims for
unemployment benefits increased
by 11,000 to 2.2 million for the week
ended May 16. Continuing claims are
reported with a one-week lag.
Canada’s current account deficit
widens
UK consumer confidence slips
unexpectedly in May
OTTAWA (WSJ) — Canada’s
current-account deficit widened to
the second-largest on record in the
first quarter, as the country’s trade
in goods sustained a sizable hit from
oil-price rout.
The
current-account
deficit
increased to a seasonally adjusted
17.47 billion Canadian dollars ($14.02
billion), Statistics Canada said on
Thursday.
The consensus call was for a
shortfall of C$18.6 billion, according
to economists at Royal Bank of
Canada. The largest shortfall on
record was C$19.65 billion in the
third quarter of 2010.
The current account is the
broadest indicator of trade in goods
and services, and a deficit suggests
a country is importing more capital
and goods and services that it
exports. Canada’s current account
benefited from a decadelong
commodity-price boom until 2008
but has since been in a deficit
position.
The country’s economy hit a
rough patch recently due to the
drop in oil prices, given that crude oil
is its largest export. The crude-price
swoon is expected to weigh heavily
on overall Canadian incomes, as the
LONDON (Reuters) — British
consumer morale fell unexpectedly
this month as optimism about the
economy in the next 12 months
faded fast, according to a survey
from market research company
GfK.
GfK said its monthly consumer
confidence
index,
compiled
mostly after the Conservative
Party unexpectedly won a national
election this month, slipped to
+1 from +4 in April. Economists
polled by Reuters had expected an
unchanged reading.
Optimism about the economic
situation over the next 12 month
fell to its lowest level since
January, while Britons also
become less upbeat about their
personal financial prospects.
"In the short term, this
suggests that despite rewarding
them with a majority in the House
of Commons, the public are not
too confident about economic life
under the Conservatives," said
Nick Moon, managing director of
social research at GfK.
He added that it was "worrying"
that the index measuring economic
optimism was now only one point
higher than its level a year ago,
lower price fetched for crude would
impact on Canada’s terms of trade,
or the difference between the value
of exports versus imports.
Canada’s current-account deficit
is roughly 3.5% of the country’s
gross domestic product, “or too
wide to be viewed as sustainable,”
said Benjamin Reitzes, economist
at BMO Capital Markets. He added
this “should be as bad as” Canada’s
current-account deficit gets, as
higher energy prices and firming
U.S. demand drives a rebound in
economic growth in the second
quarter.
In the January-to-March period,
Canada posted a C$7.25 billion
deficit in the trade of goods—
the biggest on record—up from
a shortfall of C$2.03 billion in the
previous quarter. The change
was due to lower energy exports,
as crude prices fell 32% from the
fourth quarter. Partly offsetting
the decline in energy exports were
increased sales of food products
and consumer goods.
The deficit in the trade of
services—which represents over
two-thirds of GDP—was largely
unchanged in the first quarter, at
C$5.64 billion.
having dropped six points in May
alone.
Britain's economy grew just
0.3 percent in the first three
months of this year, according to
official data on Thursday that cast
doubt on the strength of Britain's
previously robust recovery.
However, other surveys of
British
consumer
confidence
released this week have painted a
more upbeat picture than the GfK
report.
One from polling firm YouGov
and economics consultancy Cebr
showed consumer morale rose to
its highest level in more than a
year, while data company Nielsen
said confidence hit a nine-year
high in the first quarter of this
year.
Most economists polled by
Reuters expect economic growth
will quicken after a slow start to
the year.
A quarterly survey of British
service sector businesses from the
Confederation of British Industry,
also published on Friday, pointed
to strong confidence and activity
in the three months to May,
which the CBI said boded well for
economic growth.
INTERNATIONAL DAILY
7
NEWS
U.S.-German relations
marred by spying scandals
and economic controversy
With transatlantic trust, particularly in Germany, eroded by
issues like the NSA scandal and the planned trade deal TTIP,
policymakers and opinion-shapers in both countries must
address the challenges and benefits of the relationship
more vigorously and effectively. That is the key takeaway
from a new report released by the Task Force on the Future
of German-American Relations.
Only if the growing public disenchantment with the
United States can be overcome can the transatlantic
relationship fulfill its potential to play an important role in
tackling key global issues, the authors argue.
In its report, the 15-member group, led by GMF president
and former Obama adviser Karen Donfried and Munich
Security Conference Chairman Wolfgang Ischinger,
sketches the changed bilateral relationship from the end of
World War II to today and details the transatlantic divisions.
The continuing fallout from the NSA spying scandal in
Germany and the broad opposition in the country to the
transatlantic trade pact are certainly the most concrete and
prominent examples of German-American fissures. But,
the authors contend, they are only the tip of an iceberg of
deep misgivings, again stemming mostly from the German
side, about the nature of the bilateral relationship. German
uneasiness about transatlantic ties is broad, stretching from
security matters to the economy and the digital arena.
- On security, the U.S. continues to be the de-facto
guarantor of Europe's security. "The German public,
however, harbors suspicions about U.S. motives and goals",
argue the authors.
- On the economy, the study detects a similar disconnect.
"The US economic model, rather than fueling German
growth, is commonly depicted as a threat to prosperity and
stability."
- Digital matters provide a "powerful case study of
German suspicions of the US role in their lives." "There is a
German perception of the United States as a massive digitalgovernment-business-monolith, which carries profound
and worrying implications for German sovereignty and
prosperity."
According to the experts the problem is not mainly
differences in certain values, but the trade-offs being
made between competing values, like security and privacy.
The diverging positions on these trade-offs are then
compounded by what the report calls an "expectations
gap".
Germans, since the end of World War II, have "bestowed
upon the United States a certain moral authority". This
continues to shape the image and perception of the
country, even though this status has repeatedly been
questioned since.
(Source: Deutsche Welle)
Lehman Brothers' former
CEO blames bad regulations
for bank's collapse
Dick Fuld, the chief executive who led Lehman Brothers
to the largest corporate collapse in modern times, has
defended the failed investment bank’s culture, insisting
that it was a victim of wider market excesses and
regulatory failings in his first public speech since the
banking crash of 2008.
“It was all about team,” he told a conference in New
York. “My people were in it together – and our clients
knew it. There was no... ‘It’s my account,’ no ‘I’m a star,
so pay me.’”
Fuld, who was paid $485m (£317m) in salary, bonuses
and options between 2000 and 2007, also attempted to
respond to criticisms that Lehman had not been good
at assessing risks. “Regardless of what you heard of
Lehman Brothers’ risk management, I had 27,000 risk
managers, because they all owned a piece of the firm,”
he said, explaining that staff had owned more than 30%
of the bank’s stock.
In the final months before the demise of Lehman,
Fuld said the bank had been furiously attacked by hedge
funds that were short-selling the firm’s stock – effectively
betting that it would decline in value. “I will hurt the
shorts, and that is my goal,” he raged, five months before
the bank came crashing down.
The bank’s failure sent shockwaves around the global
economy and, in its wake, Fuld was summoned to appear
before Congress for what turned out to be a bruising
encounter.
Referring to Fuld’s pay, the chairman of the House
oversight committee, Henry Waxman, said: “You made
all this money taking risks with other people’s money.”
Fuld told the Congress members: “Not that anyone
on this committee cares about this, but I wake up
every single night wondering, ‘What could I have done
differently?’ This is a pain that will stay with me for the
rest of my life.”
In early 2008, short-sellers believed the bank was
vulnerable, in large part due to its exposure to complex
credit products it had built, known as collateralized
debt obligations, or CDOs. Critics have suggested such
products were an important contributor to the debt
bubble.
At the conference on Thursday, however, Fuld threw a
different light on the causes of Lehman Brothers’ downfall.
The crash, he said, “started with the government. The
government pushed for non-qualified home ownership.
The government clearly... wanted everybody to fulfil their
view of the American dream.” To this point he added the
aggravating factors of low interest rates and easy access
to credit for homeowners. Credit bubble indicators were
also plain to see, he suggested, in ballooning growth in
GDP and in the private equity and hedge fund sectors.
(Source: The Guardian)
8
I NTE R NATI O NAL DAI LY
NEWS IN BRIEF
Czech teacher battles
bee-killing disease with hot hive
Czech Republic scientists battling a bee-killing disease
are about to start testing a new weapon -- a sun-heated
hive designed by a Czech high school teacher.
Roman Linhart told Reuters he had secured a patent
for his invention after 10 years of research into ways of
wiping out varroosis disease, which has been destroying
bee colonies across the world.
The stakes are high, as the death of bees threatens
harvests which rely on the insects for pollination.
The teacher at Chrudim’s Secondary School of Agriculture, 120km (75 miles) east from Prague, joined a line-up
of experts who have been trying to find an efficient way
to tackle the condition for decades.
Experts from Czech Republic’s Palacky University said they
were about to start trialing Linhart’s method -- which aims to
kill the Varroa destructor parasite responsible for the disease
by heating up hives to 40 degrees Celsius (104 F) and higher.
(Source: Reuters)
Green tea may help prevent
prostate cancer
Researchers led by Nagi B. Kumar of the Moffitt Cancer Center found that an active component found in decaffeinated
green tea prevented “prostate cancer development in men
who have premalignant lesions,” MedicalXpress reported.
Prostate cancer, which is diagnosed in an estimated
80 percent of men who reach age 80, is the second most
common type of cancer in men.
For the study, researchers wanted to see if a one-year
intervention to see if “green tea catechins could suppress
prostate cancer development in men who had high-grade
intraepithelial neoplasia (HGPIN) or atypical small acinar
proliferation (ASAP), Science 2.0 reported. They recruited
nearly 100 men for the study.
The group that used capsules predominantly containing EGCG was compared to the placebo tablet group over
a one-year treatment period.
(Source: University Herald)
Windows 10 Build 10130
adds Cortana button, new
icons, start improvements
Microsoft continues to polish the scuff marks on Windows
10 with its latest Build 10130. The new build, released Friday
for download via the Fast Ring of the Windows 10 Insider
program, adds new icons, some default behaviors for virtual
desktops and even a manual trigger for the Cortana virtual
assistant. There are some more Start menu tweaks, too.
Microsoft hasn’t yet committed to a release date for
Windows 10, but it’s expected in July.
Assuming that’s more or less true, there’s little time left to
add new features. “As I mentioned with the last build, from
here onward you are going to see a lot of tuning, tweaking, stabilizing, and polishing which means fewer big feature changes
from build to build,” Gabe Aul, who oversees the Insider program, said in a blog post. “You’ll see that in this build which has
a number of small improvements and more polish.”
(Source: PC World)
M E D
&
S C I
MAY 31, 2015
h t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m
Warmer oceans will make
typhoons more intense
While the 2015 Atlantic hurricane
season is expected to be relatively
quiet, thanks to the influence of a
healthy El Niño, the typhoon season
in the northwest Pacific has been
jam-packed so far, even for an area
that normally sees the highest tropical cyclone activity and a large proportion of the strongest storms.
One of the strongest cyclones
ever measured, Typhoon Haiyan,
devastated the Philippines just two
years ago.
A new study suggests that the
region could see even more intense
storms in a warming world, propelled by rising temperatures in the
upper portion of the
The researchers ocean. The excess
absorbed by
wanted to find heat
the Pacific as greenwhat factors in house gas emissions
continue will lead to
the typhoons’
a 14 percent increase
environment
in typhoon intensity
might be
in that basin by 2100,
the researchers procausing
ject.
this rapid
“This is exciting
and well-executed
intensification;
research which will
those factors
no doubt influence
are more
future work on the
relationship
bereadily
tween tropical cysimulated by
clones and climate,”
climate models. Kerry Emanuel, a
hurricane-climate
researcher at MIT who wasn’t involved in the study, said in an email.
Features that make the northwest Pacific such a hazardous place
in terms of storm risk also make
it ripe for studies of patterns and
trends in tropical cyclone activity — the more storms there are,
the more data researchers have to
tease those trends from.
In particular, researchers want to
understand how the overall warming of the planet, including the
oceans, will affect future storm activity.
The emerging consensus from climate model studies is that there will
be fewer, but more intense tropical cyclones (the blanket term for hurricanes
and typhoons) in a warmer world.
Finding real-world responses
is helpful in understanding what
might happen. The study authors
did this by first looking at how typhoon intensity has changed over
recent decades by taking the average of the peak intensities that all
typhoons achieved during a season.
Recent decades had “unprecedentedly high average typhoon intensity” compared to the 1970s, they
wrote. This beefed-up intensity
seemed to be caused by high rates
of intensification, like a car that can
go from zero to 60 mph in a matter
of seconds.
The researchers wanted to find
what factors in the typhoons’ environment might be causing this rapid
intensification; those factors are
more readily simulated by climate
models. They found that the temperatures of the upper ocean layers,
particularly those just under the surface, gave the best match.
Warm waters
The link isn’t terribly surprising,
given that warm waters are the fuel
for the convection at the heart of
tropical cyclones. Storms tend to
leave a cool “wake” behind them,
as they churn cooler waters from
below. But if that water is relatively
warm, it makes sense that the typhoons would see a bigger boost.
It was surprising, though, said author Wei Mei, just how much ocean
temperatures dominated the intensification, particularly over atmospheric factors like wind shear, or
the change of speed and direction
of winds with altitude. High wind
shear can choke off a storm’s development.
Given the relationship they
found, and the amount of warming
expected in the oceans with even a
moderate level of continued greenhouse gas emissions over the rest of
the century, Mei and his colleagues
calculated that the average typhoon
intensity would go up by 14 percent.
That figure is about twice what
other researchers, like Tom Knutson
at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics
Laboratory in Princeton, N.J., have
calculated. The discrepancy could
be because the new study ignored
certain atmospheric processes that
could be more important to storm
formation in a warmer world than
they are now, both the authors and
Knutson said.
Knutson also pointed out that
other groups haven’t found the same
increase in typhoon intensity in recent
years that this study, detailed in the
journal Science Advances, identified.
Others have also found that ocean
temperature changes with depth
has more of an effect than this study
found. Knutson suggests that further
research will be needed to clear up
the picture.
(Source: Climate Central)
E. coli could be used to
diagnose diabetes and cancer
The statin dilemma:
a primer for patients
New research suggests that diabetes
and cancer could be diagnosed using
a harmless strain of the bacteria Escherichia coli (E. coli).
Two studies were conducted
that examined the diagnostic potential of E. coli: one that detected
cancer, and another that detected
diabetes. In both studies, the researchers engineered a harmless
strain of E. coli to alert them to the
presence of diseases.
A research team at the French
Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM) engineered the E.
coli strain to detect diabetes markers
in urine. Once it had, the E. coli would
produce a molecule that changed
the color of the urine. The E. coli produced enough of the chemical that
the color changes were visible.
The technique is hugely promising, because it can detect tiny
amounts of the chemicals that could
indicate diabetes. Once developed,
the research could lead to more effectiveness diagnostic techniques
for diabetes. It could also lead to the
development of more effective diagnostic techniques for other diseases.
The diabetes study was conducted using the urine of humans, with
a mixture of both diabetic and nondiabetic urine examined.
Statins have redefined the treatment of
heart disease. Statins work by halting
or reducing the buildup of fatty plaque
inside blood vessels, a condition known
as atherosclerosis, chiefly fueled by abnormally high cholesterol and the leading cause of heart attacks and strokes.
A true game changer in our fight
against these mass killers, statins have
prevented the recurrence of heart attacks and strokes in countless patients
afflicted by cardiovascular illness. Yet
using them in those with elevated
cholesterol but no history of heart attack or stroke -- the so-called primary
prevention -- still causes trepidation in
many patients and some physicians.
This shouldn't be the case. Here's
what you should know to make the
right choice.
Statins get high marks in both categories. Study after study has shown
they not only prevent first and subsequent heart attacks and strokes, but
also reduce the number of deaths
from both first and subsequent cardiovascular events. In fact, among
people with high cholesterol with
no history of heart attack or stroke,
statins slash deaths over five years
by as much as 20 percent, research
shows. And while mortality has been
traditionally used as the most critical
gauge for a drug's efficacy, it is by no
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Diabetes is also linked to several
types of cancer. In particular, having
type 2 diabetes more than double
the risk of a diagnosis of liver cancer.
In another, similar study, a team of
researchers from the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT) engineered the E. coli bacteria to detect
tumors on the liver.
The researchers fed the harmless bacteria to a group of mice. The
bacteria helped the researchers to
detect liver tumors larger than one
cubic millimeter, which makes the
process more sensitive than existing
diagnostic techniques. It could eventually be developed to detect other
kinds of cancer.
“This kind of diagnostic could be
most useful for monitoring patients
after they have had a colon tumor
removed because they are at risk for
recurrence in the liver,” said study
author Sangeeta Bhatia, professor
of health sciences and electrical engineered and computer science at MIT.
The liver cancer study was conducted on mice, who experienced no dangerous side effects for up to a year after the study was conducted. Even so,
the researchers wish to conduct more
tests to ensure the technique’s safety
before trying it out on humans.
(Source: diabetes.co.uk)
means always the most important
one, especially in light of the fact
that 85 percent of heart attacks and
strokes are nonfatal. Preventing the
nonfatal yet devastating aftereffects
of heart attacks and strokes is an
equally important yardstick of therapeutic success. People who survive a
heart attack can suffer a range of consequences -- some of them serious
and some downright catastrophic -including loss of cardiac muscle function that severely limits a patient's
quality of life and can precipitate
heart failure. Preventing nonfatal
heart attacks and strokes is an essential goal of statin therapy. Research
involving more than 100,000 participants shows that statins can greatly
reduce nonfatal heart attacks and
strokes, repeat hospitalizations and
invasive procedures such asballoon
angioplasties, stent placement and
open-heart surgery, among others.
Atherosclerosis -- the main culprit
behind cardiovascular illness -- is a
slow process that occurs over many
years, giving clinicians ample opportunity to halt or slow its progression
and ward off its most devastating
consequences. Starting a statin after a heart attack or a stroke in many
cases signals an opportunity missed.
(Source: U.S. News & World Report)
h t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m / s p o r t s
MAY 31, 2015
S
P
O
R
T
S
Mahdavikia set to appoint as
Hamburg SV U-14 coach
Rio Ferdinand announces
retirement from football
Qatar seeks Iran help for 2022 FIFA World Cup
Iran Football Federation President
cials sought help for 2022 FIFA World Cup hosting on the
sidelines of the 65th FIFA congress in Zurich on Friday.
“We had a meeting with Qatari officials on the
sidelines of the FIFA congress in which they looked
forward for our help in 2022 World Cup hosting. We
will sign a memorandum of understanding with Qatar Football Federation in the near future to boost
our cooperation,” Kafashian told reporters.
The 2022 FIFA World Cup will be the 22nd FIFA
World Cup, an international football tournament
that is scheduled to take place in Qatar in 2022. It will
be the first Arab country to host the World Cup and
the first time it is held in the Middle East region.
Instead of being held in the traditional period of
June and July, the tournament will be held in late
November. It has a reduced timeframe of around 28
days, with the final being held on 18 December 2022,
which is also Qatar National Day.
Emirates sponsor FA Cup for the next three years
Dubai’s Emirates airline will sponsor
the FA Cup for the next three years
until 2018, the English Football Association announced on Saturday.
The FA had been looking for a
new sponsor for football’s oldest
knockout competition after Budweiser’s three-year deal came to an
end last year.
The FA, which will rebrand the
competition as The Emirates FA Cup,
did not release any financial details.
However, British media estimated
the deal was worth a total of at least
30 million pounds ($45.87 million).
“Emirates’ commitment to our
sport is evident and securing such an
iconic and forward-thinking lead partner for The FA Cup is great news for
us, the fans and for the whole game,”
FA chairman Greg Dyke said in a statement.
“The partnership will help take the
tournament to new audiences, inspire
interest in football from across the
globe and allow us to continue our investment into the game at all levels.”
Arsenal face Aston Villa in the final
at Wembley later on Saturday aiming to lift the trophy for a record 12th
time.
(Source: Reuters)
Berlusconi: I want Ancelotti &
Ibrahimovic back with AC Milan
Blatter hits out at U.S. authorities
and UEFA
AC Milan president Silvio Berlusconi
says he is determined to convince
Carlo Ancelotti and Zlatan Ibrahimovic to return to the club this summer.
The Rossoneri have been vocal in
their desire to bring former boss Ancelotti back to San Siro following his
sacking by Real Madrid.
And Berlusconi claims he has the
backing of the supporters as he attempts to appoint the three-time
Champions League winner in Filippo
Inzaghi's place.
"I hope Carletto comes back to us,
we are willing to invest in him. I hope
there is a good chance he'll be the
next coach of Milan," he told Sport
Mediaset.
"Galliani and I are not the only
ones who want him to come back. All
Milan fans I've spoken to want him
back."
Ancelotti himself says he intends to
take a year out of the game in order to
Sepp Blatter has said that the events in
the run-up to his re-election as FIFA president "do not smell right" and he was
the victim of "hate" on the part of European soccer's governing body UEFA.
Blatter implied that it was not just a
coincidence that Swiss police arrested
seven leading soccer officials, including FIFA vice-president Jeffrey Webb,
two days before the FIFA Congress
and presidential election.
The seven have been detained
pending an extradition request from
the United States where they are
wanted on corruption charges.
The arrests were connected to a
bribery scandal being investigated by
U.S., Swiss and other law enforcement
agencies that has plunged FIFA into the
worst crisis in its 111-year history.
"No one is going to take it off me
that it was a simple coincidence (that)
this American attack (happened) two
days before the elections of FIFA,"
have surgery on a small issue in his back.
Berlusconi, however, hopes the
operation will not scupper his plans
and admits he is not currently contemplating any other candidate.
"He needs a small operation and
he'll make a decision afterwards,
which also takes into account his
family," he said.
"I don't want to think of another
possibility if it isn't Ancelotti. If he
doesn't come then we'll look at other
options."
Berlusconi also admitted he is determined to bring Ibrahimovic back
to the club from French champions
Paris Saint-Germain.
"I'm fixated on his return, although it's a very difficult thing to
make happen, and it will take patience," he added.
"But he's magnificent on the
pitch."
(Source: Goal)
Blatter told the RTS Swiss television
channel in an interview.
"And afterwards the reaction of
UEFA and (UEFA president Michel) Platini. No one is going to take this out of
me...I am not certain, but it's not good."
"Why didn't they (the police) do this
in March when we had the same meeting. At that time, we had less journalists."
"The Americans, if they have a financial crime that regards American
citizens, must arrest these people
there and not in Zurich in the moment
we have a congress."
Russia was awarded the right to
host the 2018 World Cup and Qatar
the 2022 tournament in a controversial vote in December 2010.
"It is a hate not only by one person of
UEFA but by the organisation of UEFA
that has not understood that I have
been president since 1998," Blatter said.
"I forgive everyone but I don't forget."
(Source: Reuters)
No change in distribution of World Cup places
FIFA will not make any changes to the allocation of
World Cup slots among the six continents for the
2018 and 2022 tournaments in Russia and Qatar,
president Sepp Blatter said on Saturday.
Europe will have 13 places, Africa 5, S.America 4.5,
Asia 4.5, Concacaf 3.5 and Oceania 0.5, while hosts
Russia qualify automatically in 2018 and Qatar in
2022.
A half place means that the team in question has
to play off over two legs against a team from another
9
FOOTBALL
Former Hamburg player Mehdi MahS p o r t D e s k davikia has agreed to take charge of
the German club’s U-14 coaching role days after his U-11
team finished in second place in the 2015 Cordial Cup.
“I had a meeting with Hamburg SV officials and I accepted their offer to coach the club’s U-14 team. They
have hired former Hoffenheim general manager who is
a specialist in youth ranks and I will gain a lot of good
experience during this new challenge,” Mahdavikia told
reporters in a press conference.
Mahdavikia who is a co-founder of KIA Football Academy led his U-11 team to Cordial Cup second place.
In May 2015, the club under-11 side was invited as
a guest team to the Cordial Cup in Austria, one of the
premier youth competitions in Europe. The little-known
team defeated SpVgg EGC Wirges (4-0), SpVgg Unterhaching (2-0), FC Bayern Munich (3-0), Bezirksauswahl
Kitzbühel (3-1) and drew in a goalless draw with Finnish
side KaPa United.
The team progressed to the next stage to defeat Hungarian champions Videoton FC (4-0) and German sides VfB
Stuttgart (1-0) and Bayer 04 Leverkusen (3-1) before progressing to the final. In the final the team lost against TSV
1860 München 7-6 on penalties, and finished runners-up
on their debut at an international tournament.
KIA Football Academy striker Yadegar Rostami was
awarded the Most Valuable Player (MVP) award and
was top goalscorer in the competition.
S p o r t D e s k Ali Kafashian stated that Qatari offi-
INTERNATIONAL DAILY
continent for a place in the finals.
UEFA president Michel Platini had on Thursday
warned that cutting the number of European teams
at the finals was "a red line that must not be crossed".
(Source: Reuters)
Former England and Manchester United defender Rio
Ferdinand has announced his retirement from football.
The former West Ham, Leeds and Manchester United
central defender spent last season at QPR, who were relegated from the Barclays Premier League.
The confirmation came after a season in which Ferdinand struggled to hold down a regular place in the QPR
side. Ferdinand was absent for the closing stages of the
campaign. His wife, Rebecca Ellison, died after a battle
with cancer on May 1.
A statement from Ferdinand read: "After 18 years as
a professional footballer I now feel it's the right time for
me to retire from the game that I love.
"As a 12-year-old boy, kicking around a football on the Friary Estate in Peckham, I never dreamt that I would play for
my boyhood club West Ham, captain Leeds United, win the
Champions League with Manchester United, or re-join my
first manager Harry Redknapp at Queens Park Rangers.
"I will always regard the 81 times that I played for England, with immense pride. These are all treasured memories that will last a lifetime.
"Starting a career, every young man needs mentors.
I found mine in Dave Goodwin, the District Manager at
Blackheath, and Tony Carr, the Youth Team Manager at
West Ham. They installed in me personality traits that lasted throughout my career. I will always be grateful to them.
"I'd like to thank Chris Ramsey, Harry Redknapp, David
O'Leary and David Moyes who managed me at various
times in my career, all the backroom staff who looked after me over the years, and the players that I played with.
I'd would also like to thank the team who managed me
off the pitch, Jamie Moralee and everybody at New Era.
"Winning trophies over my 13 years at Manchester
United, allowed me to achieve everything that I desired
in football. From a young child to today, that was all
I cared about. None of that would have been possible,
without the genius of one man, Sir Alex Ferguson.
Rio Ferdinand has paid tribute to Sir Alex Ferguson
"His greatest accomplishment in my eyes will always
be how he developed us as men, not just as footballers.
He will in my opinion, always be the greatest manager in
British football history."
"I'd also like to thank and pay tribute to my late wife
Rebecca and my family, including my mother and father,
for their sacrifices, their encouragement and their advice
throughout my career.
"And finally, I'd like to thank all the fans from all the
clubs, for without them professional football would not
exist. I will miss each and every one of you on my Saturday afternoons.
(Source: Telegraph)
Novak Djokovic
eases past Thanasi
Kokkinakis and into the
fourth round in Paris
Novak Djokovic strode effortlessly into the fourth round
of the French Open with a 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 win over giant
Australian Thanasi Kokkinakis – save for a couple of slips
on the famous Paris clay.
The world No.1 banged his feet angrily to remove the dirt
after twice sliding in the same point – the only time he did
not look completely in control of this pedestrian win.
It was a subdued Court Philippe Chatrier during the
traditional lunch-time lull and after the noise of his previous encounter with fellow Aussie Bernard Tomic, wild
card entrant Kokkinakis struggled to get going.
Djokovic broke his 6ft 5in opponent’s serve in the middle
of the first set and the very first game of the second, losing
just five points on his own serve over the same period.
A 30-shot rally at the opening of the third set finally got
the crowd going, and it was clear the neutrals were supporting Kokkinakis when he saved three match points in a row.
But the Serbian is nothing but relentless and the last
thing he needs on top of that is luck. Nevertheless, a
complete mishit brought him a break point in the third
set and from then on in it was a complete formality.
(Source: Express)
Juventus are in a league of
their own - Garcia
Rudi Garcia says Juventus are in a "league of their own"
but praised his Roma side for "coming top of their
league" after securing second place in Serie A.
A disappointing second half of the season saw Roma's
title bid fizzle out as Juventus coasted to a fourth straight
league title.
Garcia's men also had to hold off a late charge from
Lazio to secure a place in next season's Champions
League group stage, but the Frenchman says his players
couldn't have done any more.
"The course of a season never runs smooth and we
did have to negotiate a few rough moments," Garcia said
ahead of Sunday's final match with Palermo.
"We have a fantastic group of players here. We all stuck
together and that's what enabled us to finish second
"Roma is one of the most exciting projects in European
and world football but we can't get ahead of ourselves.
"Our overall assessment is that we came top of 'our'
league. Juve are in a league of their own at the moment."
Garcia has now set his sights on a better performance in
the Champions League, after being knocked out in the group
stages this term by Bayern Munich and Manchester City.
(Source: Soccerway)
10
I NTE R NATI O NAL DAI LY
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
S O C I E T Y
MAY 31, 2015
h t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m / s o c i e t y
Urban population on the rise in Iran
By Ali Asghar Pahlavan
Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there
someday.
A.A. Milne, author
LEARN ENGLISH
Reading a World Map
Greg: What are you doing with that map and that
globe?
Julianna: I’m trying to keep track of Carmen as she
travels from country to country. I just got another
postcard from her today.
Greg: I’m not sure I like the idea of my daughter
traveling around the world with a group of people for
three months. It’s not safe.
Julianna: She can take care of herself. You know
she’s the adventurous type. Give her a compass and
she can find her way around anywhere. Help me find
Nauru on this map. I don’t even know what continent
it’s on. I was never any good at geography.
Greg: All right. You look above the equator and I’ll
look below it, but couldn’t you just look it up on the
Internet? It would be easy to find the latitude and
longitude of this place.
Julianna: This is more fun. I sort of feel like I’m on an
adventure myself.
Greg: I can’t make heads or tails of this map. It’s not
to scale and this legend is all wrong!
Julianna: It doesn’t matter. We just need to find
the place name, and then I can put a pin in this map
showing where’s she’s been.
Greg: I have a better idea. I’ll look it up on the
Internet and get you all of the vital statistics you’d
want, like its location, okay?
Julianna: Forget it. Sometimes it’s more fun doing
things the hard way.
(Source: eslpod.com)
Words & Phrases
globe: a map of the world made in the shape of
a ball and attached to a support, that can be turned
around at the same angle as the Earth turns in space.
postcard: a card, often with a photograph or picture
on one side, which can be sent without an envelope.
adventurous: not afraid to do new and dangerous
or exciting things.
compass: a device for finding direction with a
needle that can move easily and that always points to
magnetic north.
continent: one of the seven large land masses on
the Earth’s surface, surrounded, or mainly surrounded,
by sea and usually consisting of various countries.
equator: an imaginary line drawn around the middle
of the Earth an equal distance from the North Pole and
the South Pole.
latitude: the position north or south of the equator
measured from 0° to 90°.
longitude: the distance of a place east or west of an
imaginary line from the top to the bottom of the Earth,
measured in degrees.
sort of: in some way or to some degree.
I can’t make heads or tails of something: to not be
able to understand something.
legend: the words written on or next to a picture,
map, coin, etc. that explain what it is about or what the
symbols on it mean.
place name: the official name of a town or an area.
vital statistics: a group of official facts that show
such things as the number of births, deaths, and
marriages in a particular country, area, etc.
TEHRAN — Socioeconomic issues are among the
main reasons driving Iranians out of villages and into
the cities.
After Iraq’s invasion of Iran on September 22,
1980, many Iranians, living on the Iran-Iraq borders
sought refuge in major cities in the country.
34 years after the beginning of the Iran-Iraq war,
Jahanbakhsh Abdahu, a man from the city of Qasr-e
Shirin in Kermanshah Province, describes his experience as an internally displaced civilian during the
war.
Having been forced to flee from his hometown,
Abdahu recalls, “Our city was occupied by the Baathist army. It was one of the bitter days of my life,
and we had to migrate to Tehran. I’ll never forget
those days as long as I shall live. We were left with
no alternative but to move away.”
Now, after 26 years of what marks the end of the
imposed war on Iran, the country has one of the
highest urban growth rates in the Middle East.
According to a United Nation’s report, in 1950,
about 27 percent of Iran’s population was urban, but
now, the figure has more than doubled and reached
a staggering 65 percent.
A UN report predicts that by 2030, Iran’s population will be nearly 80 percent urban, an unprecedented figure for a developing country.
Now, let’s take a look at the downfall of rural population growth and migration to bigger cities.
The development gap between rural and urban
areas is a reason to increase migration.
Immigration has always been one of the outstanding problems of the last decades and has had
various motives along history.
Trying to improve welfare and achieve a better
life is amongst the common goals of people in every
society, hence, any shortage in these areas makes
people leave their habitat and move to a new place
in search of a better life.
In comparison with developed countries, in developing countries there is more migration from villages to cities, and statistics show that this process
puts villages in danger of abandonment.
The lure of cities is irresistible and hastens
migration. Repulsion and lure of rural and urban
life indicates drastic differences of these two
environments.
Uneven development creates a gap in jobs,
salaries, and social services for different classes of
the society and hence people are lured to migrate to
cities to escape from the hardships of life.
Unemployment is a major reason behind migration
from villages -- which is chiefly due to the economic
situation, automation of agricultural processes, lack
A UN report predicts that by 2030, Iran’s population will be nearly 80
percent urban, an unprecedented figure for a developing country.
of facilities to improve individual abilities, natural
disasters, etc.
Overpopulation in suburban areas of the cities
and abandonment of villages are some of the
consequences of this phenomenon.
At a national conference on cities and villages on
October 6, 2014, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani
expressed regret about the wave of migration from
villages to cities and said that research centers and
universities have to conduct investigations to discover
the underlying issues behind this phenomenon.
Rouhani added that sustainable development
is the main objective of his government, and the
population decline in rural areas has to be halted.
As such, it is expected that more sustainable
economic development measures will be adopted in
the upcoming years by the government in the villages
and towns to halt the urge of people migrating from
rural areas to megacities.
Water crisis can be solved if irrigation water reduced by 10%: energy minister
TEHRAN — Iranian
Minister
Hamid Chitchian said on Friday that
many of the water related problems
affecting Iran can only be solved
if irrigation water is saved by 10
percent, the Mehr news agency
reported.
Chitchian, who made the remarks
during the opening ceremony of the
Dez irrigation and drainage network,
which is situated in the southern part
of Karkhehnoor River, added that the
development of irrigation networks
S o c i a l D e s k Energy
in Hoveyzeh and Azadegan will help
local inhabitants to have access to
high quality and clean water.
“It is difficult for the government
to run such programs under
imposed sanctions; however, a
lot of efforts are being put to
accomplish the projects at hand on
time,” he added.
The
energy
minister
also
announced that Ghadir project
will be accomplished by the end of
the current Iranian calendar year
(March 2016), and all areas in Dasht-e
Azadegan County will receive
potable water.
In the project, water will be
supplied from Dez dam, and it will
be channeled along 430 kilometers
to Ahvaz, Shedgan and Dasht-e
Azadegan.
“This project has been costly,
but we are content that Khuzestan
citizens have access to high quality
potable water”, he added.
“Geographically, Iran is situated in
a dry area of the globe. So, drought
is not a short-term problem and
must be taken more seriously,” he
concluded.
1.5 hectares of brushwood burnt in Khuzestan
TEHRAN — The
of
the
Natural Resources and Watershed
Department of Dezful confirmed that
about 1.5 hectares of brushwood
in Dezful, Khuzestan Province, was
S o c i a l D e s k head
burnt on Friday afternoon, IRNA
reported.
Ali Derakhshanifar told reporters
that the fire took place in brushwood
area of Zavieh-azib Village in the
central part of Dezful.
Cultivating fruit trees in Chabahar
without irrigation is possible, Kardovani
Fire brigade units were quickly
deployed to the scene and successfully
brought the fire under control.
An investigation is underway into
the cause of the fire, he added.
This is the second fire incident in
one week affecting the same area after
parts of Zaviyeh Khersan Village were
burnt on Monday.
Drought plays a serious threat to
over 5,000 hectares of brushwood in
Dezful.
Hundred tons of trash found in a
60-year-old woman’s house
W O R D O F T H E D AY
riot act
\RYE-ut-AKT\
DEFINITION
( noun)
:a vigorous reprimand or warning — used in the
phrase read the riot act
EXAMPLES
Celia’s parents read her the riot act after she stayed
out for almost an hour past her curfew.
“[Angela Merkel] read Greece and other affected
zone members the riot act: their borrowing and spending was out of control, and they’d have to rein it in, just
as Germany had done.” — Paul Hockenos, The Nation,
(Source: merriam-webster.com)
TEHRAN — Parviz
the
discoverer of the hottest point on
the earth, says that Chabahar would
be a suitable area to cultivate certain
types of fruit trees that don’t require
irrigation, the Tasnim news agency
reported on Thursday.
Kardovani called on officials to pay
more attention to the area which is
Iran’s coolest costal city in summertime
and the warmest in winter giving the
ideal climate for fruit growing.
“The trees are evergreen in
S o c i a l D e s k Kardovani,
Chabahar and banana trees there can
produce about 1,070 bananas each,” he
said.
Chabahar´s flat water is less polluted
than that of the Persian Gulf, therefore,
a six-month-old baby can easily float in
the waters without problems; however,
there are still oil spills in the area.
Chabahar is Iran’s southernmost
city, situated on the Makran Coast of
Sistan and Baluchestan Province and
has been officially designated as a
Free Trade and Industrial Zone by the
government.
TEHRAN — An
S o c i a l D e s k official in Bukan
Municipality said that about 100
tons of rubbish was discovered in
a 60-year-old woman’s residence,
IRNA reported on Wednesday.
Samarand Doori confirmed that
one of the neighbors contacted
the police complaining of a strong
stench in the neighborhood.
Doori said that police and
municipal officials rushed to the
house and were shocked to see an
avalanche of rubbish in the front
yard, to the point of even blocking
the front door.
It took 24 trucks to transfer the
rubbish, he added.
He said that the garbage, which
had been collected during the last 10
years, was packed everywhere in the
yard, garage and rooms.
The house belongs to the old
woman who is accustomed to pick
up trash, Doori concluded.
Bukan County is located in the
southern part of West Azerbaijan
Province.
h t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m / i n t e r n a t i o n a l
The United States has condemned
China’s land reclamation in the South
China Sea, saying it is out of step with
international rules.
U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter
called for an “immediate and lasting
halt” of the works during the annual
Shangri-La Dialogue, an international
security conference, in Singapore on
Saturday.
“First, we want a peaceful resolution of all disputes. To that end, there
should be an immediate and lasting
halt to land reclamation by all claimants,” Carter said at the conference.
A Chinese military officer, also at
the conference, immediately disputed
the comments as “groundless and not
constructive”.
Carter’s comments came as defense officials revealed that China had
put two large artillery vehicles on one
of the artificial islands it is creating in
the South China Sea.
The discovery, made at least several
weeks ago, fuels fears in the U.S. and
across the Asia-Pacific that China will
use the land reclamation projects for
military purposes.
Last week the Chinese military
ordered a U.S. Navy P-8 Poseidon
surveillance aircraft to leave an area
above the heavily disputed Spratly Islands. But the U.S. plane ignored the
demand.
Contd. from P. 1
WORLD IN FOCUS
U.S. condemns China’s land
reclamation in South China Sea
“There should be no mistake: the
United States will fly, sail, and operate
wherever international law allows, as
US forces do all around the world,”
Carter said in Singapore.
He acknowledged that other claimants have developed outposts of differing scope and degree, including
Vietnam with 48, the Philippines with
eight, Malaysia with five and Taiwan
with one.
Iraq forces edge
towards Ramadi
Meantime, an army colonel
said ISIL unleashed eight suicide car
bombs on a military base in eastern
Anbar on Saturday. Forces equipped
with anti-tank systems were able to
stop all of them, he said.
“Army forces managed to repel
a Daesh [ISIL] attack involving eight
vehicle bombs driven by eight suicide
bombers,” said the colonel at the
base in Al-Shiha, about 50 kilometers
(30 miles) west of Baghdad.
He said they used Kornet (Cornet)
anti-tank guided missiles “recently
delivered to the security forces”.
The United States also announced
after the fall of Ramadi that it was
sending 2,000 Swedish-developed
AT4 unguided anti-tank weapons
to help the Iraqi forces counter the
threat of car and truck bombs.
As they attempt to isolate Anbar
from other provinces, Iraqi forces
have also been fighting in Salaheddin province (Saladin Governorate),
MAY 31, 2015
“Yet, one country has gone much
farther and much faster than any other, and that’s China.”
“It is unclear how much farther China will go. That is why this stretch of
water has become the source of tension in the region and front-page news
around the world.”
Al Jazeera’s Marga Ortigas, who’s
been following events at the conference, explained “freedom of naviga-
tion has basically been assured over
70 years, greatly because of the U.S.
presence. Should there be a tip in that
power balance, there’s fear the chaos
will result in instability in the region”.
Ortigas added that nothing “concrete in terms of policy or agreements” is likely to come from the
conference, but that it did allow for
a “comfortable, stable space for constructive discussions.”
China claims nearly all of the South
China Sea, on the basis of lines on Chinese maps published in the 1940s and
locking it into disputes with several
Southeast Asian neighbors - including
Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia.
The Spratly Islands known in Chinese as Nansha Qundao are a disputed
group of more than 750 reefs, islets,
atolls, cays and islands in the South
China Sea. The archipelago lies off the
coasts of the Philippines, Malaysia,
and southern Vietnam.
The Spratlys are one of the major archipelagos in the South China Sea. The
small and remote islands have massive
economic value and are important to
the claimants in their attempts to establish international boundaries. The
islands also have no indigenous inhabitants, but offer rich fishing grounds
and may contain significant oil and
natural gas reserves.
(Source: agencies)
Nigeria’s Boko Haram in deadly
attack on northern town
whose capital Tikrit was recaptured
two months ago but where ISIL still
holds territory.
Federal and Hashed al-Shaabi forces
have been making progress in the Baiji area, around 200 kilometers (120
miles) north of the Iraqi capital Baghdad, which commands access to a key
road leading to western Anbar.
The advances come as Iraqi forces
have reportedly captured 200 ISIL terrorists near Ramadi, with a statement
by Iraq’s Defense Ministry saying
that over 140 Takfiri terrorists were
killed in the fresh operations launched
by the Iraqi troops and volunteers in
various areas of the country, Press TV
reported.
The latest developments come
as the Iraqi army, along with volunteer forces, has stepped up
its fight against ISIL Takfiri terrorists across the country, especially
in the provinces of Anbar and Salahuddin.
(Source: agencies)
Boko Haram terrorists have killed at
least 10 people as they tried to advance onto a town near the Borno
State capital of Maiduguri in Nigeria,
just hours after President Muhammadu Buhari was sworn in.
Al Jazeera’s sources in the area
reported the killings by the terrorists
who fired rocket-propelled grenades.
Another 10 people were reportedly
injured.
Hundreds of gunmen are reported
to have advanced to Ajilari-Cross, just
south of Maiduguri early on Saturday
morning, but were repelled by the
military.
The incident occurred just hours
after Buhari’s inauguration ceremony was held in Abuja. It was the first
peaceful, democratic transfer of
power in Nigeria since its independence.
At the ceremony, the new leader
promised a crackdown on the Boko
Haram terrorists would be a top
priority, saying he wants to tackle
Boko Haram “head on”. Buhari also
ordered the operational command
over the fight against the terrorist
group be relocated from Abuja to
Borno State.
Borno has borne the brunt of
many of the recent attacks by the
armed group. The violence has
forced tens of thousands of people
from their homes.
Boko Haram that roughly
means “Western education is
forbidden”, is a radical armed
terrorist group group based in
northeastern Nigeria, also active
in Chad, Niger and northern Cameroon. Estimates of the terrorist
group’s membership varies from
7,000 to 10,000 fighters. The
group initially had links to al-Qaeda, but in 2014 it expressed support for the Islamic State in Iraq
and the Levant (ISIL) terrorist
group before pledging formal allegiance to it in March 2015.
(Source: agencies)
Heat wave eases in India after killing nearly 2,000 people
A meteorologist says showers and thunderstorms
have eased sizzling summer temperatures in southern India, where a heat wave has claimed nearly
2,000 lives.
Y.K. Reddy, an Indian Meteorological Department director, says the heat wave is expected to
continue in parts of worst-hit Telangana and Andhra
Pradesh states for another 24 hours.
Heat-related conditions, including dehydration and heat stroke, have killed at least 1,490
people in Andhra Pradesh and 489 in Telangana.
Daytime temperatures hovered between 40
and 45 degrees Celsius (104 and 113 degrees
Fahrenheit) in the two states on Saturday, after
soaring to as high as 48 C (118 F) earlier in the
week.
People across India have been plunging into rivers, staying in the shade and drinking lots of water
to try to beat the heat.
(Source: AP)
U.S. gets permanent stronghold at
Spanish military base, can triple contingent
Spain signed an agreement with the
United States allowing to make its
presence at a military base in southwest of the country permanent. Moron Air Base will be now able to station
up to 3,000 troops - more than triple
the size of the current contingent.
United States Africa Command (USAFRICOM) recently used Moron Air
Base for operations to contain the Ebola outbreak sweeping through West
Africa.
The high point of U.S. Secretary of
State John Kerry’s visit to Madrid on
Sunday and Monday will be sealing
the agreement. Once signed, the new
agreement needs to be ratified by the
Spanish parliament.
The top-level visit sees Kerry planning to meet King Felipe, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and Foreign Minis-
ter Jose Manuel Garcia Margallo.
Moron Air Base is located in Spain’s
Andalusia region, the country’s southernmost province. The base is less than
an hour’s drive from Seville, a city with
a population of almost one million.
The bilateral agreement concerning
U.S. military presence at Moron Air
Base was signed back in 1988 and accords permitting U.S. presence at the
base have been renewed on an annual
basis.
Initially, there were no American
troops stationed there.
But following a deadly attack on the
U.S. consulate in Libya’s Benghazi on
September 11, 2012, which claimed the
life of U.S. Ambassador Christopher
Stephens and three other Americans,
U.S. troops were allowed on to the
Spanish base in April 2013.
Last October, the U.S. asked Spain
for the usage of two military bases in
its south as ‘stopover points’ in the
American mission to control the Ebola
outbreak in West Africa.
The request was granted and the
U.S. began utilizing Moron de la Frontera and Rota in Andalusia for its Africa
missions.
The Pentagon now can augment
the number of servicemen at Moron
from the current 850 to 3,000 troops,
with 2,200 American Marines planned
to arrive shortly. The number of military aircraft stationed at the base can
grow from 14 to 40.
The deal includes a pledge to invest
€26 million ($US 29 million) into development of the site, reports El Pais.
Speaking at a press conference in
Madrid, Spain’s Deputy Prime Minis-
ter Soraya Saenz de Santamaria said
deployment of the U.S. rapid reaction
force to the country will contribute to
stability not only in Africa, but in Europe and the Middle East.
The base is to remain Spanish
territory, so all American unilateral
missions from the base would need
Spanish permission, stressed the
official.
According to the deputy PM, American investment in the Moron Air Base
will boost the local economy of the
region.
The U.S. Marines stationed in
Spain are expected to protect American embassies in the region, perform
rescue missions and intervene in regional conflicts and humanitarian
crises.
(Source: RT)
I N T E R NAT I O NALDAI LY
11
JUMP
Burundi’s fragile
peace can still unravel
Contd. from P. 6
The security forces have become divided and fragile.
The police, accused of deploying a heavy handed response to the protests, are seen as being partisan.
The fragility and division in the army came to the open
during the intense, albeit brief, fighting that ensued following the declaration of the coup between members of
the army supporting the coup and those that remained
loyal to the president. Despite his acceptance of the
defeat of the coup, the
leader of the coup is on the
run.
Faced with a plethora
of political, institutional,
security and humanitarian
challenges, Burundi is on
the verge of the precipice.
The first issue that needs
urgent attention is the contestation over the president’s third-term bid.
The first issue that
needs urgent attention
is the contestation over the president’s third term bid.
While national processes in Burundi played their part including in the form of the contested decision of the Constitutional Court, the issue has not gone away and has
become a crisis requiring external mediation.
The meditation process
The mediation process bringing together the relevant national stakeholders that the UN, African
Union and the East African Community have been
working on needs to be reinvigorated. Apart from
ensuring that confrontation between police and
protesters are avoided, efforts should be made to
secure an enabling environment for talks. This includes security for opposition and civil society leaders as well as journalists.
This is crucial to avoid a repeat of events similar
to the killing of Zedi Feruzi, head of one of the opposition parties, Union for Peace and Development,
which triggered further protests and led opposition
and civil society groups to break off the talks with
the government.
The timing of the elections should also be settled.
Given the events the country experienced, the palpable tension and reported violations, the blow that
security institutions responsible for safeguarding
the freedom and security of the election suffered,
the large number of people who fled the country, it
would only be logical for the Electoral Commission of
Burundi to postpone the elections.
The EAC and the AU as well as the UN have called for
the postponement of the elections. The parliamentary
elections, originally scheduled for May 26, were pushed
to early June. It remains uncertain if the date for the
presidential elections, June 26, will also be rescheduled.
Together with the European Union, which is running an
electoral support mission, the UN and the AU should
work on how to help the country create the minimum
conditions for holding the elections.
There are reports of reprisal attacks against those suspected of participating in the coup. Those charged with
plotting the coup have reportedly been beaten.
Killings and kidnappings
Killings and kidnappings of wounded pro-coup soldiers
in Bumerec hospital have also been reported. Measures
should be put in place to stop or address the occurrence
of violation of human rights and thereby reduce the tension and insecurity.
In this regard, the decision of the AU to deploy human
rights observers is a very commendable step. For this initiative to have the required impact, it should be implemented promptly and the mission should have adequate
number of monitors.
Finally, the humanitarian situation that the flow
of refugees to neighboring countries has created
and its impact on the region should also be addressed. According to the UN High Commissioner
for Refugees, more than 105,000 people are seeking asylum in neighboring DRC, Rwanda, Tanzania,
and Uganda.
As part of the mediation and stabilization process, more immediate action should be taken to
stem the flow of refugees. For now, apart from the
flow of refugees, the crisis in Burundi remains containable. However, if the situation is allowed to fester indefinitely and measures along the lines above
are not taken, it could plunge the country into wider
violence capable of upsetting the delicate peace between its major ethnic groups and potentially reigniting the civil war.
(Source: Al Jazeera)
IMIS to introduce 200
Iranian mining projects
to investors
Contd. from P. 1
Western companies are one after the other engaged in talks with Iran to resume their delayed activities or make new investments in the Islamic Republic.
On May 9, Iran’s Vice President Es’haq Jahangiri
pointed to the growing number of Western companies attempting to return to Iran following the
possible removal of sanctions against the country
and said Tehran would rather support foreign investment.
b
I N T E R N AT I O N A L D A I L Y
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No. 18, Bimeh Lane, Nejatollahi St., Tehran, Iran
P.o. Box: 14155-4843
Zip Code: 1599814713
NEWS
Master of Iranian
ritual music Gholam
Margiri dies at 81
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Poem of the day
And still my breast heaves with last night’s desire,
For countless echoes from that music sprang.
Hafez
Prayer Times
Printed at: Kayhan - ISSN: 1017-94
Noon:13:02 Evening: 20:35 Dawn: 4:06 (tomorrow)
Sunrise: 5:50 (tomorrow)
Tehran Auction sells about $6.5m,
setting new record for Iranian art sale
Contd. from P. 1
TEHRAN — Master of Iranian ritual
A r t D e s k music Gholam Margiri, famous for
his performance on the daf and the unique tone of
his voice, died of a stroke on Friday. He was 81.
Margiri
was
originally
from
the
southern Iranian city
of Hormozgan and was
called Baba Zaar in his
hometown. The Zaar
ceremony is a healing
ritual, which uses the
daf,
drumming
and
singing to heal the spirit
of individuals.
He gave his last
performance of Zaar at
the Festival 4020 in the
northern Austrian city
Iranian ritual musician Gholam of Linz where several
Iranian and international
Margiri in an undated photo
performers
had
attended.
Margiri was due to attend the 2nd Ayeneh-Dar
Regional and Ritual Music Festival to be held at
Tehran’s Rudaki Hall from June 6 to 9.
Before beginning his performance, Margiri
transferred the spirit of music to the European
participants with his charismatic character,
percussionist Alireza Mollahosseini, who was
accompanying Margiri in the festival, had said
earlier.
Music researcher Morteza Safa called Margiri a
treasure of special potentials of music and his death
was a great loss for the regional music of Iran.
Austria’s Festival 4020 Artistic Director Peter
Leisch offered his message of condolences over the
death of Margiri.
Deputy Culture Minister for Artistic Affairs Ali
Moradkhani offered condolences over the demise
of the master and called Margiri a great musician
of the Iranian southern region, who had a special
status among musicians and surely nobody would
replace him in the future.
In a message submitted to the Persian service of
IRNA, Leisch called Margiri a successful musician
who had a unique personality.
He added that it was a great honor for him to
have hosted the master at his festival.
Peter Leisch had traveled to Hormozgan to delve
deeply into the music being performed in this region
in April 2014.
He described Iran as a diverse continent of
the music of the world and said that Iran enjoys a
unique variety of music, which has the potential to
influence the world.
The festival focused on Iranian music in 2013
by organizing the Persia-Mirror program, which
featured performances by Iranian musicians from
around the world.
Sold for 7.2 billion rials, “Sill Life” by Bahman
Moasses was the fourth top seller.
The auction stirred with excitement again as
another Sepehri painting from his Tree Trunk
series fetched 7 billion rials.
Other highlights of the auction were sculptor
Parviz Tanavoli’s “Monument I for Word Heech”,
and Aidin Aghdashlu’s diptych painting “Enigma
XXV”, both of which sold for 5 billion rials.
The other highlight was illustrator Ali-Akbar
Sadeqi’s “Love Garden” that made 4.5 billion rials.
A total of 126 works from artists, including
Masud Arabshahi, Mohammad Ehsaii, Jalil Rasuli,
Behjat Sadr and Parviz Kalantari, went under
the hammer at the sale by auctioneer Kianian,
who announced his plan to withdraw from the
auction after four years.
This year, a collection of works by classical
Iranian artists was sold on the sidelines of the
Tehran Auction.
A work by Kamalolmolk, a court painter during
the reign of Qajar king Nasser ad-Din Shah, was
snapped up for 5 billion rials.
“This section is dedicated to those artists
whose works previously sold at international
auctions,” the auctioneer of the section, Hossein
Pakdel, said during the sale.
Tehran
Auction
employees
hold a
painting
from Sohrab
Sepehri’s
Tree Truck
series during
the fourth
edition of the
auction at
the Parsian
Azadi Hotel
on May 29,
2015. The
artwork
was the first
top seller,
fetching over
$845,000.
(ISNA/
Hemmat
Khahi)
The organizers plan to hold the section
independently in the future, he added.
The Tehran Auction earned over 2 billion rials
during its first and second sales in 2012, 2013.
English translator of Holy Quran Rahim Parchebaf-Dowlati honored
TEHRAN – Iranian translator of
Culture D e s k Holy Quran into English Rahim
Parchebaf-Dowlati was honored for his lifelong
efforts in translating the Holy Book during a
ceremony held at Tehran’s Rayzan International
Conference Hall on Friday.
The ceremony was attended by Head of Iran’s
Presidential Office Mohammad Nahavandian,
and a number of researchers, scholars and
students of the master, the Persian service of
ISNA reported on Saturday.
“Several years ago when I was in the United
States, I was looking for a copy of the Quran with
an English translation and I found one translated
by a Jew. I felt sad that a Jew had translated
Quran and not me as an Iranian. So I promised
myself to spend the rest of my life translating the
Quran,” Parchebaf-Dowlati said at the ceremony.
He called the translation of Quran an effort
to achieve the original meaning. “Following the
study of different translations of the Quran in
Rahim Parchebaf-Dowlati attends a meeting that literati held in
Tehran on May 29, 2015 to honor the Iranian translator of Holy
Quran into English.
other countries, I tried to focus on producing a
simple and acceptable translation of the Holy
Quran.”
English is an international language and
PICTURE OF THE DAY
translation of the Quran into English can fulfill
the need of a large number of Muslims and nonMuslims who are not familiar with Arabic or
Persian but are looking for the truth, ParchebafDowlati explained.
“Those Muslims familiar with Arabic or Persian
can also benefit from the English translation in
order to express their religious beliefs to others,”
he added.
Parchebaf-Dowlati has also translated Nahj-ulBalagha of Imam Ali (AS) into English.
In his short speech Nahavandian also said
that becoming familiar with modern skills and
languages to promote religion began to manifest
itself in the life of master Parchebaf-Dowlati.
“We have repeatedly heard that preserving
the religious spirit is the social responsibility of
Muslims, and this promotion helps preserve
the life of religious culture. We need to transfer
culture to others and religious culture is not an
exception,” Nahavandian added.
By Abolfazl Arabjavadi/Mehr
Painting
A collection of paintings by
Masud Molaii is on display at Shokuh
Gallery.
The exhibit runs until June 12 at the
gallery located at 19 Amir Nuri Alley,
North Salimi St. near Andarzgu Blvd.
An exhibition of paintings by
Babak Roshaninejad is underway Asar
Gallery.
The exhibit will be running until
June 19 at the gallery located at 16
Barforushan St. off Iranshahr Street.
NEWS IN BRIEF
University
of Tehran to
display photo
of U.S. School
of Drama
Iranian
troupe to
perform at
Armenian
puppetry
festival
The
University
of
Tehran
will
showcase
photos depicting scenes
of everyday life at the
School of Drama at the
University of Washington
in an exhibition, which will
run for three days at the
College of Fine Arts of the
university.
The photos were taken
by
Iranian
playwright
Naghmeh
Samini
and
stage designer Payam
Forutan.
Iranian theater troupe
Khorshid is scheduled
to perform “Someday
the
Dandelions
Will
Arrive” during the UNIMA
International
Puppetry
Festival, which will be held
in Armenia from June 1 to
7.
Directed
by
Sahar
Shahgaldi
and
Maneli
Vafadari, the play will go
on stage tomorrow.
The festival with the
motto of “Puppets for
Peace and Intercultural
Dialogue” is dedicated to
the 70th anniversary of
UNESCO, the organizers
announced
on
their
website.
WHAT’S IN ART GALLERIES
Sculpture
Sareban Gallery is playing host
to an exhibition of sculptures by Zahra
Mohseni.
The show runs until May 31 at
the gallery, which can be found at 8
Mehmandust St., off Shahid Beheshti
Ave.
Photo
Iranian setar virtuoso Keyvan Saket (L) and conductor Helmut Oesterreich (R) acknowledge the audience after a joint performance with 27 German
guitarists from the Goethe Institute at Tehran’s Vahdat Hall on May 29, 2015.
Works by 17 Iranian
photographers, including Mehrdad
Afsarian, Abnus Alborzi, Shahriar
Tavakoli and Melika Shafahi, are on
display in an exhibition at the Igreg Art
Studio.
The exhibition will come to an end
on June 5 at the gallery located at 28
Mohajer Alley, off Iranshahr Ave.
Center opens in Serbia to promote Persian language
TEHRAN — The
Culture D e s k Iranian
cultural
attaché’s office in Belgrade has
established a center in the Serbian
capital to promote the Persian
language.
The foundation entitled the Center
for Persian Language Enthusiasts aims to
bring together professors and students
of Persian language and literature,
Iranian cultural attaché Mahmud Shaluii
said during the inauguration ceremony
of the center on Friday.
He said that many students across
Serbia are interested in learning Persian
and four universities are providing
comprehensive
Persian
language
courses in the country.
Shaluii expressed his hope that the
center would open up an opportunity
for the development of Persian
studies.
The ceremony went on with a
speech by Persian literature professor
Saeid Safari, who elaborated on new
approaches towards teaching and
learning language.
He expressed his hope that the
center will deepen Persian studies in the
country.
The official language of Iran, Persian
is spoken by over 110 million people
around the world.
A branch of the Indo-European
language family, it is mainly spoken in
Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan.