football jahane

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It is still unclear S. Arabia
was behind the death of its
pilgrims in Iran: diplomat
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Shahid Rajaee Port’s
development plan to use
€107m Chinese finance
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Parviz Mazloumi takes
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football team
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Egyptian reciters invited
to Iranian Quran sessions
during Ramadan
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
U.S. has
taken ‘political
approach’
toward
terrorism
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12 Pages Price 10000 Rials 37th year No.12299 Monday JUNE 22, 2015 Tir 1, 1394 Ramadan 5, 1436
Iran, 5+1 will agree
on final deal this
summer: Fitzpatrick
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW
By Javad Heirannia
TEHRAN — Mark Fitzpatrick, director of the non-proliferation program at the International Institute for
Strategic Studies (IISS), believes that Iran and the six
major powers will agree on a “comprehensive” nuclear deal this summer because “both sides have made
significant compromises”.
“I believe that a comprehensive agreement will be
reached this summer, although probably not by the 30
June deadline. Both sides have made significant compromises,” Fitzpatrick says in an exclusive interview
with the Tehran Times.
He says both Iran and its negotiating partners “should
should not let the remaining issues stand
in the way o
of an agreement.”
Iran has said it will
not allow inspection
of milita
military sites or
interview with its nuclear experts
exp
under
the Additi
Additional Protocol once it signs a final
nuclear acco
accord with the
5+1 group aand insists it
must be treated
like other NPT
signa
signatories.
Contd. on P. 2
NEWS
Cables released by
WikiLeaks reveal Saudis’
checkbook diplomacy
It seems that everyone wants something from Saudi Arabia.
Before becoming the president of Egypt, Mohamed
Morsi wanted visas to take his family on a religious pilgrimage. A Lebanese politician begged for cash to pay
his bodyguards. Even the state news agency of Guinea, in
West Africa, asked for $2,000 “to solve many of the problems the agency is facing.”
They all had good reason to ask, as the kingdom has
long wielded its oil wealth and religious influence to try
to shape regional events and support figures sympathetic to its worldview.
These and other revelations appear in a trove of documents said to have come from inside the Saudi Ministry
of Foreign Affairs and released on Friday by the group
WikiLeaks.
While the documents appear to contain no shocking revelations about Saudi Arabia, say, eavesdropping on the United States or shipping bags of cash to militant groups, they
contain enough detail to shed light on the diplomacy of a
deeply private country and to embarrass Saudi officials and
those who lobby them for financial aid. And they allow the
curious to get a glimpse of the often complex interactions
between a kingdom seen by many as the rich uncle of Middle East and its clients, from Africa to Australia.
In a statement carried by the Saudi state news agency
on Saturday, a foreign ministry spokesman, Osama Nugali, acknowledged that the documents were related to a
recent electronic attack on the ministry.
He warned Saudis not to “help the enemies of the
homeland” by sharing the documents, adding that many
were “clearly fabricated.” Those who distribute the documents will be punished under the country’s cybercrimes
law, he said.
Mr. Nugali also struck a defiant tone, saying the documents were essentially in line with the “state’s transparent policies” and its public statements on “numerous
regional and international issues.”
More than 60,000 documents have been released so
far, with WikiLeakspromising more to come. They include
identification cards, visa requests and summaries of news
media coverage of the kingdom. The most informative
are diplomatic cables from Saudi embassies around the
world to the foreign ministry, many of which are then
passed along to the office of the king for final decisions.
Many of the cables are incomplete, making it hard to
determine their date and context, and very few indicate
which requests were approved by the king and ultimately
carried out. Most documents focus on a turbulent period
in the Middle East, beginning after the popular uprisings
that toppled Arab leaders in 2011 and continuing through
Contd. on P. 11
early this year.
Majlis bans
inspection of military sites
TEHRAN — The
Political Desk Iranian parliament
voted on Sunday to ban access to military sites and documents and interview with nuclear scientists as part
of a possible nuclear deal with world
powers.
Of the 213 lawmakers present, 199
legislators, some chanting “Death to
the America,” voted in favor of the
bill. Three lawmakers opposed the
bill and five abstained.
The bill also demands the complete
lifting of all sanctions against Iran as
part of any final nuclear accord.
The bill must be ratified by the
Guardian Council to become a law.
Contd. on P. 2
Syrian minister says visits Tehran
for consultation on war against terrorism
TEHRAN — Syrian
Political Desk Interior Minister
Muhammad Ibrahim al-Sha’ar said on
Sunday that he is visiting Tehran for
consultations with Iran about campaign against terrorism, IRNA reported.
Talking to reporters upon his arrival at Imam Khomeini airport, al-Sha’ar
said that the two countries have excellent brotherly relations.
He said cooperation between the
two countries is exemplary.
During his stay in Tehran, he is
due to study the current campaign
against terrorism.
He said campaign against terrorism requires firm determination of
the two governments.
The Syrian interior minister is
scheduled to confer with his Iranian counterpart Abdolreza Rahmani,
President Hassan Rouhani, Secretary
of Supreme National Security Council Ali Shamkhani, and Police Chief
Hossein Ashtari on issues of mutual
interests as well as regional developments.
Syria is in a serious war with terrorists groups such as Daesh and al-Nusra Front.
Iran has been giving military advice to both Syria and Iraq in their
fight against terrorists whose brutalities have shocked the world.
From the very beginning when the
insurgency started against the Syrian
government in 2011 Iran warned the
West and regional Arab countries
that support for insurgents would
lead the birth of al-Qaeda type terrorist activities.
In a report in early April, the UN
said over 25,000 militants from
more 100 nations have joined al-Qaeda and ISIL in Iraq, Syria and other
countries.
Syria and Iraq were the destination for over 20,000 of the militants,
where they went to join ISIL and the
al-Nusra Front, the report added.
Yemen forces take control of Saudi bases in Jizan
The Yemeni army, backed by popular
committees, has seized control of
a number of Saudi military bases in
the province of Jizan as Riyadh keeps
pounding the impoverished Arab nation.
According to media outlets on
Sunday, Yemeni forces managed to
capture three Saudi military sites
in the area of al-Jaberi in the southwestern region.
The Yemeni forces also set fire to
two Saudi military vehicles in the attack on Saudi military bases.
Yemen’s al-Masirah TV reported that Saudi forces collectively
left their positions and fled the
area as a result of the Yemeni attack.
Reports said earlier in the day that
at least one Saudi soldier had been
killed and five others wounded in a
separate Yemeni retaliatory attack in
Jizan.
Reports over the past days have
shown a surge in border clashes between Saudi ground forces and Yemeni fighters.
The advance by Yemeni forces
comes as Saudi Arabia continues to
target Yemen with deadly attacks.
Saudi warplanes continue to
bomb areas across Yemen
Saudi warplanes have carried out
new airstrikes against several areas
across Yemen, inflicting more human
loss and material damage on the
country.
According to local media reports,
two Saudi airstrikes hit the Saqayn
district of the northwestern province
of Sa’ada on Sunday. There were no
immediate reports of possible casualties in the attacks.
Earlier on Saturday, Saudi fighter jets targeted a residential area in
Yemen’s central province of Ma’rib.
Five people, including women and
children, were killed.
Two women were also killed in a
similar attack on the Sahar district of
Sa’ada.
In the capital, Sana’a, the Saudi
warplanes targeted a mosque killing
four members of a family and wounding nine others.
Yemeni retaliation
Meanwhile, fighters from Yemen’s
Ansarullah (Houthi) movement, backed
by allied army units, carried out retaliatory rocket attacks against military bases
in Saudi Arabia’s southern provinces of
Dhahran al-Janoub and Jizan.
At least one Saudi soldier was
killed and five others were wounded
in the Yemeni retaliatory attack in Jizan.
UN-sponsored talks in Geneva between Yemen’s warring parties ended on Friday without agreement on
a ceasefire, an outcome relief agencies had sought in order to support
efforts to stave off what many see as
a humanitarian disaster.
The Saudi military campaign
against Yemen, which began on
March 26 without a UN mandate, is
meant to restore power to fugitive
former President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, who is a staunch ally of the
House of Saud regime, and undermine the Ansarullah movement.
More than 2,800 people have
been killed since 26 March. The United Nations says more than 21 million
people, or 80% of the population,
need some form of humanitarian aid,
protection or both.
(Source: agencies)
Iran to open
door to oil
investment
as companies
eye return
Iran is poised to flood the market
with another 1 million barrels per
day (bpd) of crude oil should it
achieve a binding agreement on its
nuclear program by the next deadline on June 30.
The scale of Iran’s potential to
flip the global oil market on its head
has been highlight in the latest report on the country’s energy sector
produced by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) - part of
the U.S. Department of Energy.
An agreement with the P5+1
powers - the U.S., UK, China, Russia, France, and Germany - would
trigger a rush by international oil
companies (IOCs) to return to
the country which has been off
limits.
In its latest report, the EIA said:
“Iran is planning to change its oil
contract model to allow IOCs to participate in all phases of an upstream
project, including production. However, international sanctions have affected foreign investment in Iran’s
energy sector, limiting the technology and expertise needed to expand capacity at oil and natural gas
fields.”
Contd. on P. 4
NEWS
ISIL militants
plant mines
and bombs in
Palmyra
Huge explosion
reported in northeastern
Syrian town
The Islamic State in Iraq and
the Levant (ISIL) terrorist
group has planted mines and
bombs in the ancient part of
the central Syrian city of Palmyra, home to Roman-era ruins, a group monitoring the
war said on Sunday.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it was not immediately clear whether the group
was preparing to destroy the ancient ruins or planted the mines
to deter government forces from
advancing towards the city, also
known as Tadmur< Reuters reported.
“They have planted it yesterday. They also planted some
around the Roman theatre, we
still do not know the real reason,” Rami Abdulrahman, the
head of the Observatory, told
Reuters.
The ultra-hardline group in May
seized the city of 50,000 people,
site of some of the world’s most extensive and best-preserved ancient
Roman ruins.
ISIL has proclaimed a caliphate
to rule over all Muslims from territory it holds in both Syria and
Iraq. Its militants have a history
of carrying out mass killings in
towns and cities they capture and
of destroying ancient monuments
which they consider evidence of
paganism.
Huge explosion in northeastern Syria
Meanwhile, the official Syrian news agency and activists
reported a huge explosion in
the northeastern town of Qamishli near the Turkish border.
Contd. on P. 11
2
I NTE R NATI O NAL DAI LY
MEDIA MONITOR
TEHRAN — Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei
donates over $50,000 to the
release of needy prisoners.
The donation was made on
the occasion of a national day on
which people aid needy prisoners by
providing them with the blood money they owe to the victims of their
offences, Mehr reported on Sunday.
The day, called Golrizan, is held
annually nationwide with the participation of officials and charity
donors in Tehran and other cities
in order to assist those inmates
who are in need of money to be
released from jail.
Defense
Ministry
says ready
to counter
threats
TEHRAN — In a statement released on Sunday the Iranian
Defense Ministry declared
that it is ready to help counter
enemy threats.
According to Tasnim news
agency, the statement was released on the martyrdom anniversary of Mahdi Chamran, the first
defense minister of post-revolutionary Iran on June 21, 1981.
The date of martyrdom has
been dubbed Basij Day of University Teachers.
The statement referred to the
country’s resistance during three
decades of outside pressures and
stressed the Iranian armed forces’
preparedness to defend the country against any type of aggression.
French FM’s
visit to Iran
a possibility:
MP
TASNIM
PRESS TV
FARS
Docs reveal
Saudi
efforts to
stir political
unrest in
Iran: Fars
TEHRAN — Tehran is not
pressed for time in reaching
a nuclear agreement with
the 5+1 group, and the talks
are very likely to continue beyond the self-imposed June
30 deadline, the Iranian foreign minister has said.
“We believe that a good agreement should be reached so it means
that we do not feel pressed for time,”
Mohammad Javad Zarif said in an
interview with an Iranian daily published on Saturday, Press TV reported.
The senior Iranian official said
Tehran and its negotiating partners might need more time to secure an agreement but rejected an
extension for the negotiations.
The June 30 deadline could be
pushed forward a few days until a final agreement is reached, he added.
“We want to proceed with [the
talks] until we reach a conclusion.
This is, in my opinion, a better approach than extending [the negotiations],” Zarif said.
TEHRAN — The Saudi embassy
in Tehran in a letter had asked
the kingdom’s officials to foment unrest in Iran by investing
huge sums in social networks and
media, shows a cable released by the
Yemen Cyber Army after it hacked
the Saudi Foreign Ministry in May.
The document shows that the
Saudi ambassador in Tehran in a
cable to Riyadh called for conducting measures to stir unrest in Iran
and pave the way for changing the
country’s political system, Fars reported Saturday.
The Saudi envoy also underlines
in the cable that the problems of
Iran’s political system should be
highlighted through media outlets
and social networks such as Twitter and Facebook.
The Saudi diplomat then calls for
using the Persian and Arabic-language media and the Arabic-speaking citizens of southern and western
Iran for the same purpose.
JONOUBNEWS
Nuclear
talks may
continue
beyond June
30 deadline:
Zarif
MEHR
Leader
donates
$50K to
release
needy
prisoners
TEHRAN — An Iranian MP says
that a visit to Iran by French
Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius has not become final yet.
Abdolvahid Fayyazi, vice
chairman of Iran-France parliamentary friendship group,
said that the issue is a possibility, noting that the French side
may be evaluating the grounds
for the trip, Jonoub News website reported on Sunday.
However, the lawmaker raised
the possibility that reports about the
visit may be an attempt by the Western country to influence Tehran’s approach to the ongoing nuclear talks.
Earlier, French weekly Actualite
Juive had reported Paris was ready
to send a minister to Iran if a nuclear deal is struck.
N
A
T
I
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N
JUNE 22, 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
Iranian parliament bans inspection
of military sites
Contd. from P. 1
The bill further reads, “No restriction
on the acquiring of knowledge and
peaceful nuclear technology and research and development would be
accepted, and the regulations of the
Supreme Council of National Security
must be observed.”
Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani read
the bill aloud in a session broadcast
live on radio.
The terms stipulated in the bill allow
for international inspections of Iranian
nuclear sites, but forbid any inspections of military facilities.
“The International Atomic Energy
Agency, within the framework of the
safeguard agreement, is allowed to
carry out conventional inspections of
nuclear sites,” the bill states.
However, it concludes that “access
to military, security and sensitive nonnuclear sites, as well as documents
and scientists, is forbidden.”
The bill also holds that all the sanctions imposed against the country be
lifted immediately upon the implementation of the nuclear deal.
Iranian negotiators must brief
parliamentary committee on nuclear
talks
The bill also stipulates that the outcome of nuclear talks must be presented to the parliament, and that the
Majlis National Security and Foreign
Policy Committee should report on the
trend of the implementation of the potential deal to the parliament every six
months.
Nozar Shafiee, the spokesman for
the parliamentary committee, says a
number of negotiators involved in the
nuclear talks with six world powers
will attend a session of the committee
in coming days.
Speaking to reporters, Shafiee said
the members of Iran’s negotiating
team will attend a meeting with the
committee on Tuesday to brief the lawmakers on the latest developments in
nuclear talks with the 5+1 group (Russia, China, the United States, Britain,
France and Germany).
Since June 17, deputies foreign ministers Abbas Araqchi and Majid Takht
Ravanchi have been holding talks with
European Union deputy foreign policy
chief Helga Schmid in Vienna to draft
the text of a comprehensive deal on
Tehran’s nuclear program.
Experts have also been holding
tight meetings simultaneously. This
fresh round of diplomatic negotiations
will continue steadily as the negotiating sides have set June 30 as the deadline to strike a deal.
MP says bill will not affect nuclear talks
Talking to reporters, legislator Ali
Motahari said the bill would not affect
the trend of the talks negatively and
that it would not “tie the hands of [the
country’s nuclear] negotiators.”
Motahari also noted that inspection of the country’s military and nonnuclear sites would never be allowed
unless permitted by the Supreme National Security Council.
Parliament’s bill seeks removal
of all sanctions
Following the voting session, Ebrahim Aqa Mohammadi, the representative of the people of Khoramabad in
Majlis, said the bill seeks the total removal of all sanctions imposed against
the country.
He also noted that all the nuclear
activities of the country have been under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Organization, saying
that it would leave no excuse for the
West to cling to its sanctions policy.
Tehran says U.S. has taken ‘political approach’ toward terrorism
TEHRAN — The Iranian Foreign
Po l i t i c a l D e s k Ministry on Saturday dismissed
the annual report by the U.S. State Department in
which it accused Iran of sponsoring terrorism.
Ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Aham called
the accusation against Iran politically motivated.
“Political approach toward the inhumane phenomenon of terrorism and adoption of double stand-
ards are roots of the complicated and growing problems of terrorism,” stated.
She went on to say that ignoring the Zionist regime of Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians by the
U.S. invalidates Washington’s claims in fight against
terrorism and such reports by the State Department.
Calling Iran one of the “the biggest victim of terrorism” over the past three decades, she said mak-
ing accusations against Iran that has always “prioritized” war against terrorism through international
cooperation “does not conform to the current realities”.
In its annual report on terrorism published on Friday, the State Department claimed Iran “continued
to sponsor global terror” attacks in 2014 and supplied arms to the Syrian government.
Iran fears no threat: navy chief
Iran is already in fight against ‘the enemy’s soft threats’
TEHRAN
—
The
Po l i t i c a l D e s k Iranian Navy com-
mander said on Sunday that Iran has
stood against all the threats and has
no fear of threats.
Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari
said the country is already in fight
against “the enemy’s soft threats”.
He also highlighted the importance
of promoting the country’s readiness
to counter against soft threats.
Sayyari went on to say that the enemies have targeted the youths’ religious
beliefs in their soft war against Iran.
But, he added, they will not achieve
their goal.
Elsewhere in his remarks, he described having “insight” as the most
important strategy to counter the enemy in the soft war.
It is still unclear S. Arabia was behind the death
of its pilgrims in Iran: diplomat
TEHRAN — The Iranian deputy
Po l i t i c a l D e s k foreign minister for consular af-
fairs has said that it is not still clear whether the Saudi Arabian intelligence body was involved in death of
the country’s pilgrims in Iran.
Hassan Qashqavi made the remarks in an inter-
view with Al-Alam TV channel aired on Sunday.
He stated that more investigations will be done
and no certain result has been achieved yet.
Earlier in June, four Saudi pilgrims died and 23 were
hospitalized after they were poisoned while staying in
a hotel in the shrine city of Mashhad in northeast Iran.
Iran, major powers will agree on comprehensive deal this summer: Fitzpatrick
Contd. from P. 1
However, Fitzpatrick says “it will be
necessary for Iran to accept some verification measures that go beyond the
Additional Protocol” given questions
on ‘possible military dimension’ of its
past nuclear activities.
Iran has said PMD is a forgery invented by ill-wishers to harm the cooperation between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency. Also on
June 16, Secretary of State John Kerry
said the U.S. is ‘not fixated’ on PMD.
Following is the text of the interview with Fitzpatrick:
Don’t you think that demands
by some Western members of the 5+1
group for inspection of Iranian military sites and interview with nuclear
scientists are excessive and go beyond
the Additional Protocol to the NPT?
A: One of the most vexing issues
remaining to be negotiated between
Iran and the six major powers regards
future inspector access to military
sites. From a Western perspective, it
is a no-brainer that Iran should not be
able to hide nuclear weapons work at
military bases. Iran, on the other hand,
has a legitimate need to protect military secrets that are unrelated to illicit
nuclear activity. The answer is to allow
managed access.
After all, the safeguards Additional
Protocol, which Iran has agreed to implement, allows for the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to take
environmental samples anywhere in
the country where there is reasonable
suspicion of nuclear material- or nuclear fuel cycle-related activity taking
place. Military sites are not excluded
from the sweeping provision of ‘anywhere’. The Additional Protocol provides for what is called ‘complementary access’ by inspectors to sites in
order to resolve questions relating to
the correctness and completeness of a
state’s nuclear declaration.
Some countries like the U.S. and
UK have signed the Additional Protocol, so aren’t these countries’ military
facilities subject to inspection by the
IAEA as well?
A: The IAEA Additional Protocol applies the same rules to all of the nonnuclear weapons states that have accepted it. So if the IAEA had suspicions
about nuclear activity at a military base
in Japan or Germany, for example, the
IAEA would have the right to access.
But Japan and Germany have not giv-
en the IAEA any reason for suspicion.
The case of the USA and United Kingdom are different, because as nuclear
weapon states recognized by the NPT,
they operate under a different set of
safeguards. Since they already are acknowledged as nuclear-armed states,
there is no reason for the IAEA to seek
to determine their non-nuclear status under the Additional Protocol. It
would not make sense.
Generally, don’t you think that
the 5+1 group is seeking to impose
new things on Iran under the pretext
of the Additional Protocol?
A: The Additional Protocol is an
international norm that has been accepted by most states of the world. It
will not be ‘imposed’ on Iran. Rather,
Iran is asked to accept it as part of a
negotiated settlement to the concerns
that have been raised about its nuclear
program. Given Iran’s history of safeguards violations and the evidence
about past nuclear activities of a ‘possible military dimension’ I believe it will
be necessary for Iran to accept some
verification measures that go beyond
the Additional Protocol, in order to
Iran has a legitimate need to protect military secrets.
The answer is to allow managed access.
overcome what former IAEA Director
General Mohamed ElBaradei called
Iran’s ‘confidence deficit’.
How do you see the future of
the talks? Can both sides reach a final
agreement?
A: I believe that a comprehensive
agreement will be reached this summer, although probably not by the 30
June deadline. Both sides have made
significant compromises. They should
not let the remaining issues stand in
the way of an agreement.
In addition to non-proliferation,
one of the mandates of the IAEA is nuclear disarmament; however, nuclear
armed powers mostly insist on nonproliferation and nuclear disarmament is somehow put into oblivion.
Please explain?
A: Actually, the IAEA mandate does
not include nuclear dismantlement. Its
mandate is threefold: non-proliferation,
peaceful use of nuclear energy and nuclear safety. Perhaps you are referring
to the disarmament goal of the NPT.
The nuclear powers have agreed to that
goal, and they have made significant
strides toward reaching it. The nuclear
arms race has not only been stopped,
as called for in the NPT, but it has been
reversed. The United States has reduced
its nuclear arsenal by 80%.
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
JUNE 22, 2015
INTERNATIONAL
Not friends yet:
Japan, S. Korea mark 50-year treaty
Foreign ministers from Japan and
South Korea held a rare meeting Sunday on the eve of the 50th anniversary
since their countries normalized relations marred by Japan’s colonization
and World War II conquest.
Yet, the ties between the most
important U.S. allies in Asia are so
low that one hoped-for outcome of
the meeting is an agreement for the
countries’ leaders to just show up at
Monday’s ceremonies in their respective capitals, instead of exchanging
written statements.
“It’s a grave situation, and what’s
more serious is that Japan’s diplomacy
toward South Korea has turned harsher against the backdrop of public sentiment,” said Junya Nishino, a political
science professor at Keio University.
Yun Byung-se’s visit Sunday was the
first by a South Korean foreign minister
since 2011. Yun and his Japanese counterpart, Fumio Kishida, shook hands
but made no comment during the several minutes of media coverage at the
outset of their highly sensitive talks.
They were expected to discuss Japan’s
sexual enslavement of Korean women
and other outstanding issues related
to wartime history. Yun is set to meet
with Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe
on Monday before attending anniversary events in Tokyo.
According to a poll by Japanese
newspaper Asahi and South Korea’s
Dong-a Ilbo, published Saturday,
more than half of the respondents in
both countries say their image of the
South Korea’s Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se, left, shakes hands with Japan’s Foreign
Minister Fumio Kishida before their meeting at the foreign ministry’s Iikura guest
house in Tokyo Sunday, June 21, 2015.
other side has worsened in the past
five years.
The poll also found that 87 percent
of South Koreans feel strongly about
better relations with their neighbor,
compared to 64 percent in Japan.”Trust
between Japan and South Korea has
been largely lost, and it’s not easy to
restore it right away,” said Nishino.
Abe and South Korean President
Park Geun-hye have yet to hold fully
fledged bilateral talks since taking office in 2012 and 2013, respectively.
Washington has been concerned about
its allies’ strained relations.
They are rooted in Japan’s coloniza-
tion of Korea, from 1910 to the end of
World War II. The relations improved
in the late 1990s, following Japanese
apologies, cultural exchanges and a
Korean pop culture boom in the 2000s,
but nosedived a few years ago largely because of differences over their
shared history.
Many Koreans still remember Japan’s 35-year colonization as the era
of brutality and humiliation, during
which they were forced to use Japanese names and language while their
pride, heritage and sense of identity
were severely threatened. After ties
were normalized, three more decades
passed before Seoul officially allowed
Japanese films and other popular culture back into the country.
A downturn started in 2012, when
then-South Korean President Lee
Myung-bak visited a cluster of Seoulcontrolled islets also claimed by Japan.
As public sentiment soured, ethnic
Koreans in Japan, many of whom descendants of forced laborers, became
target of racial insults by right-wing
extremists.
Anti-Korean books and magazines
have become bookstore staples,
while Korean pop idols who once
dominated Japanese TV shows have
largely disappeared, and many shops
in downtown Tokyo once known as
Korea Town closed.
Nishino said the deterioration
in relations could also be traced to
South Korea’s rising economic clout
and international profile, which have
touched a nerve for many Japanese,
who have lost confidence in their
own leadership amid economic slump
and political disarray.
Tokyo maintains that the 1965
treaty settled all compensation claims
between Japan and South Korea, but
Seoul says wartime crimes, including
sexual slavery, should be readdressed.
Economic relations are still generally strong, although Japanese tourist arrivals and direct investment in
South Korea have declined since 2012,
while those from South Korea have
remained relatively stable.
(Source: AP)
Pentagon chief to push U.S. allies
to ditch ‘Cold War playbook’
Athens: Europe ‘doesn’t need IMF’
on eve of crunch summit
U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter
will urge NATO allies to “dispose of
the Cold War playbook” during a trip
to Europe this week, as the alliance
adapts to a new kind of threat from
Russia in the east and Islamic State to
the south, U.S. officials said.
Carter heads first to Berlin, where
he is expected to call for a more
muscular global security role from
Germany, Europe’s largest economy.
Germany remains hesitant to deploy
troops abroad, seven decades after
the end of World War Two.
“He will encourage Germany, under the firm leadership of the minister
of defense, to increase their security
role in the world, commensurate with
their political and economic weight,”
a senior U.S. defense official said,
speaking on condition of anonymity.
Relations between Moscow and
the West have plunged to a postCold War low since Russia annexed
Ukraine’s Crimea region. NATO says
Russian is still actively providing military support for separatists in eastern
Ukraine, despite Moscow’s denials.
U.S. officials say Ukraine has illustrated the importance of being able
to counter “hybrid warfare,” the
blend of unidentified troops, propaganda and economic pressure that
the west says Russia has used there.
NATO’s historic focus had been the
conventional threats of the Cold War,
which ended in 1991.
Greece does not want any more help
from the IMF (International Monetary
Fund), Minister of State Nikos Pappas
said on Sunday on the eve of a summit
which could determine whether the
country crashes out of the eurozone.
“I am one of those who think that
the IMF should not be in Europe. I hope
we find a solution without its participation,” Pappas, who is close to Prime
Minister Alexis Tsipras, told the daily
Ethnos on Sunday.
He claimed that Europe “has no
need” of the Washington-based institution, which has an “agenda which is
not at all European” and “can continue
without it and its money”.
The IMF was called in to help rescue
Greece at the end of 2009 when the
debt-plagued country could no longer
borrow on international markets.
The EU’s involvement in the huge
bailout, which was to provide 240 billion euro in loans in exchange for drastic austerity measures and reforms,
runs out at the end of this month, but
IMF support was supposed to continue
to March 2016.
Talks between Greece and its lenders have deadlocked for nine months
over the payment of the next 7.2-billion-euro tranche of the bailout, with
talk also turning to an extension of the
European help.
Differences of approach between
the EU and the IMF have also dogged
the discussions.
“Carter ... will really push the alliance to think about new threats,
new techniques, urge them to kind
of dispose of the Cold War playbook
and think about new ways to counter
new threats,” the official said.
In visits in Germany and then in Estonia, Carter will get a first-hand look
at NATO’s new rapid response forces
and climb aboard a U.S. warship fresh
from Baltic Sea drills, aiming to reassure allies unnerved by Russia’s intervention in Ukraine.
Carter will likely offer details on
plans to pre-position heavy military
equipment in Europe, the official
said.
All of the moves been decried by
Moscow, which has threatened to
beef up its own forces and to add
more than 40 intercontinental ballistic missiles to its nuclear arsenal
this year.
Apart from Russia’s annexation of
Crimea, NATO officials say the rise of
Islamic State and other militants in
North Africa and the Middle East has
also dramatically changed NATO’s security environment.
NATO defense chiefs meeting on
Wednesday and Thursday in Brussels
are expected to discuss plans to create an alliance role in Iraq aimed at
strengthening Iraq’s institutions. A
plan could be approved in July, the
U.S. official said.
(Source: Reuters)
For the Greek government any extension of the bailout should be about
kick starting the country’s devastated
economy and not further austerity.
They also want its crippling debt burden lightened.
“The agreement should be of a type
and timeframe so that it would restore
confidence,” Pappas told the newspaper. “It shouldn’t be short-term which
would only lead to further uncertainty.”
He set out Greece’s demands, which
include the exchange of 27 billion euros
of Greek debt held by the European
Central Bank to be transferred to the
eurozone’s crisis-fighting fund, the European Stability Mechanism -- an idea
first floated by Finance Minister Yanis
Varoufakis.
Other demands include a restructuring of debt owed to the IMF, and an
economic development program that
would last until 2021.
But Athens proposals have already
been knocked back by their creditors,
who have insisted on their own mixture
of cuts and reforms, which Pappas dismissed as “unacceptable to whichever
Greek political party” was in power.
Tsipras will meet the leaders of the
18 other eurozone countries for a summit in Brussels on Monday to try to find
a way of preventing Greece finally defaulting on its debt repayments due at
the end of the month.
(Source: AFP)
Judge at Dylann Roof’s hearing, used racial epithet in Charleston court
The judge presiding over Friday’s appearance by
the 21-year-old accused of a racially motivated mass
shooting at a Charleston, South Carolina, church has
previously been reprimanded for using a racial epithet in court.
Charleston County Magistrate James Gosnell was
publicly reprimanded by a South Carolina disciplinary
body in 2005 for uttering a derogatory word for an
African-American to a defendant at a bond hearing.
The same reprimand noted that Gosnell later bent
the rules to get another judge out of jail who’d been
caught driving under the influence with an open container in his car.
In 2003, according to records on the South Carolina Judicial Department website, Gosnell spoke to
a black defendant appearing before him whom he
knew personally.
“There are four kinds of people in this world black people, white people, red necks, and n_____,”
Gosnell said to the man, according to the file. The
judge later claimed that the crude observation was
told to him by a black sheriff’s deputy.
Details of Gosnell’s transgressions resurfaced Saturday on CNN.
On Friday, Gosnell allowed family members of the
nine victims killed at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church to address Dylann Roof, the 21-year-old
charged with the mass shooting. That drew attention back to his rebuke for racist language.
The judge had agreed with the Office of Disciplinary
Counsel that he violated several parts of the official
Code of Judicial Conduct, including that judges “shall
not, in the performance of judicial duties, by words or
conduct manifest bias or prejudice, including but not
limited to bias or prejudice based upon race.”
Gosnell’s intervention on behalf of Charleston
Municipal Court Judge Joseph Mendelsohn, who
was arrested for drunk driving, came two days after
the vulgar language in court.
According to the reprimand, he sprung Mendelsohn from jail in the middle of the night although the
procedure called for holding him until a normal bond
hearing convened the next morning. Mendelsohn
had been arrested in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, which has different rules from the county court,
where Gosnell has authority.
Gosnell met Mendelsohn and a Mount Pleasant
lieutenant at the jail in an atypical arrangement that
sprung the judge. Gosnell took the ticket issued to
Mendelsohn, stamped “bond hearing” on the back
and entered $1,000 -- the usual amount for a DUI
bond -- on the form. (It is unclear from the record if
money changed hands.)
Gosnell stepped over other rules that would have
required all inmates awaiting bond hearings to get
an impromptu appearance like Mendelsohn. After
handling Mendelsohn’s case at 2:30 a.m, he finished
by saying “this didn’t happen until 8:00 a.m.,” the
time such hearings are scheduled to begin.
(Source: The Huffington Post)
INTERNATIONAL DAILY
3
Israel carries out strike
to destroy drone crashed
in Lebanon
Reports says the Israeli military has carried out a strike to
destroy the wreckage of a drone that had crashed in a remote area of Lebanon’ western Bekaa region, in another
violation of Lebanese sovereignty.
Lebanon’s al-Manar television quoted a Lebanese security official as saying that the drone had crashed near
the town of Saghbine in the Bekaa region overnight on
Saturday.
According to the report, the Israeli military targeted
the crashed drone in a Sunday morning strike in an attempt to make sure the aircraft is completely destroyed.
Lebanese officials are yet to comment on the reports.
There have been no immediate reports of casualties in
the incident. The Lebanese army has dispatched a team
to the site.
(Source: AP)
Palestinian shot after
stabbing Israeli policeman
A Palestinian has stabbed an Israeli paramilitary policeman at an entrance to the Old City of East-Jerusalem
(al-Quds) and was then shot by the policeman, police
said.
Israeli medical sources said the Israeli soldier was
seriously wounded. Police spokeswoman Luba Samri
said the border policeman had been stabbed in the
neck.
Al Jazeera’s Nisreen El Shamayleh, reporting from
West Jerusalem, said both men had been hospitalized.
There were some reports that the 18-year-old Palestinian had not survived Sunday’s incident.
Violence in Jerusalem has risen in the past year,
after a Palestinian teen was burnt alive by Israeli assailants in an alleged revenge attack over the killing of
three Israeli youths in the West Bank by two Palestinians.
On Friday, two Israeli hikers were shot by a suspected Palestinian assailant near a Jewish settlement in the
West Bank, killing one man and wounding the other.
The attacker escaped.
(Source: Al Jazeera)
Ten shot, one killed,
at Detroit block party
Ten people were shot, one of them fatally, at a block
party in Detroit, the Detroit Free Press reported on its
web site.
Three of the victims were women who ranged from
ages 26 to 45, the newspaper said, citing police, who
did not yet know the motive.
No details were available on the person killed, but a
46-year-old man was in critical condition and two men,
ages 21 and 26, were in serious condition.
Asst. Chief Steve Dolunt told the Free Press that no
children were hit, although many were present when
shots were fired on a basketball court where the party
was taking place.
“I think one individual was the target. The others
just happened to be at this party,” the paper quoted
Dolunt as saying.
Police were continuing to investigate and trying to
interview witnesses.
(Source: Reuters)
Israel rejects ‘dictates’
as France’s top
diplomat visits
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday rejected “international dictates” ahead of a visit
by France’s top diplomat, with Paris advocating a UN
resolution laying out parameters for peace talks.
“The only way to reach an agreement is through
bilateral negotiations, and we will forcibly reject any
attempts to force upon us international dictates,” Netanyahu said at the weekly cabinet meeting.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius hold separate talks with Palestinian and Israeli leaders later on
Sunday during a tour of the region.
Without mentioning France, Netanyahu said that
the proposals put forth on creating a separate, independent Palestinian state had neglected to address
vital Israeli security concerns.
“In the international proposals that have been suggested to us -- which they are actually trying to force
upon us -- there is no real reference to Israel’s security
needs or our other national interests,” Netanyahu said
in comments quoted by his office.
“They are simply trying to push us into indefensible
borders while completely ignoring what will happen
on the other side of the border.”
Fabius, during a visit to Cairo on Saturday, urged
the resumption of Middle East peace talks, while warning that continued Israeli settlement building on land
the Palestinians want for a future state would damage
chances of a final deal.
Peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians
have been comatose since a major US push for a final
deal ended in failure in April 2014.
(Source: AFP)
4
I NTE R NATI O NAL DAI LY
NEWS
Iranian crude oil price up 63
cents in a week
TEHRAN – Iran sold light crude oil at
Economic Desk $61.85 per barrel on average in the
week ended on June 12, a 63 cents rise compared to its
preceding week.
The country sold heavy crude oil at $59.96 per barrel
on average in the mentioned week, showing 54 cents
growth compared to its previous week, according to
the Shana News Agency.
Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries
(OPEC)’s basket price stood at $61.8 in the mentioned
week, with 60 cents growth from its preceding week.
Iran was the third leading producer within the OPEC
in May, outpacing the United Arab Emirates, OPEC said
in its Monthly Oil Market Report.
Iran produced 2.845 million barrels of oil per day
(bpd) in May, the report said, ranking Iran next to Saudi Arabia and Iraq at the third place.
Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh has said
that Iran’s oil production could be lifted by one million
barrels per day within half a year of Western sanctions
being lifted.
The country currently exports 1.3 million bpd,
against 2.2 million bpd before the sanctions were imposed about one decade ago.
With holding 157 billion barrels of recoverable crude
oil reserves, Iran possesses the world’s fourth largest
crude oil reserves.
IKCO opens gearbox
research center
TEHRAN — Iran Khodro Industrial
Economic Desk Group has established a new
research center as part of its larger plan to develop
various car systems.
IKCO CEO and president, Hashem Yekke Zare
said, over the past years the industrial group has
established several research centers in different
fields including body and engine, all aimed at growing
its knowhow in car industry.
He went on describing Gearbox Research Center as
a milestone in IKCO’s technical strategy saying, IKCO
assigned Charkheshgar Company to establish the
new center given its expertise in gearbox production.
IKCO president also said the industrial group would
attach great importance for production of automatic
gearbox and gearbox with six gears. He noted: At first
step, automatic double clutch transmission (D.C.T)
would be designed and produced.
Yekke Zare called for cooperation between IKCO
experts and national and international universities
adding that such cooperation is a must for designing
new gearboxes.
He emphasized that IKCO has already began
cooperating with a foreign partner to design new
products under IKCO’s brand.
Charkheshgar Company has been producing
gearbox for heavy vehicles since 1969. German ZF
holds 17 percent of its stocks.
E C O N O M Y
JUNE 22, 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
Shahid Rajaee Port’s development
plan to use €107m Chinese finance
TEHRAN — China
finalized a
deal with Iran to finance the second
phase of the plan to develop Shahid
Rajaee Port in Iran’s southern province
of Hormozgan, according to an
official with the Ports and Maritime
Organization (PMO) of Iran.
Abdolkarim Razzazan, the director general for purchase and maintenance of equipments at PMO,
said supply of equipments for the
second phased of Shahid Rajaee
Port’s development plan requires
€180 million, of which €107 million
will be financed by China, the Fars
News Agency reported on Sunday.
The official said that the equipments are scheduled to be exported to Iran in the next Iranian calendar year (March 2016-March 2017).
At present, over 80 percent of
the port equipments are domestically manufactured in Iran, he noted.
The first phase of the plan came
on stream in February 2008, increasing the ports’ container transportation capacity to 3 million TEU
from 1.8 million TEU.
Economic Desk has
Canada suffering an “income
recession,” says TD Bank
Iran to open door to oil investment as
companies eye return
Canada’s gross domestic product
shrank in the first quarter of this
year, but it’s actually been in an
“income recession” since late last
year, according to a report from TD
Bank.
What TD is referring to is the
reduction of personal income, government revenue and corporate
profits due to the decline in oil
prices.
Oil is Canada’s largest export.
Lower prices for crude oil have hit
the country’s energy sector hard,
forcing thousands of layoffs and
the cancellation or delay of capital
spending. While some benefits are
expected–including increased consumer spending in other areas because of lower prices for gasoline–
the overall effect is expected to be
negative.
The decline in oil prices was a key
driver of the 0.6% annualized contraction in Canada’s gross domestic
product in the first three months of
the year.
But real GDP numbers don’t capture all of the effects of the oil price
The scale of Iran’s potential to
transform world energy markets is
vast. The country holds the world’s
fourth-largest oil reserves and
the largest natural gas reserves.
Production of both has fallen
sharply since sanctions but the reintroduction of IOCs and their new
technology would allow Iran to
fully exploit its natural assets.
“Iran’s exports of crude oil
and condensate dropped from
2.6 million barrels per day (bpd)
in 2011 to almost 1.3 million bpd
in 2013 as a result of U.S. and
European Union sanctions that
targeted Iran’s oil exports. Iran’s
exports rose by nearly 150,000
bpd to 1.4 million bpd in 2014. The
largest buyers of Iranian crude
and condensate are China, India,
Japan, South Korea, and Turkey,”
according to the EIA’s research.
Crude prices would struggle to
hold their current levels around
$65 per barrel should Iran reach
agreement on its nuclear program
at the end of this month. Although
drop on Canada’s economy.
That’s in part because real GDP,
the version most often referred to,
is adjusted to remove the effects of
changing prices. When you look at
“nominal” GDP, which isn’t adjusted that way, Canada’s economic
performance looks considerably
weaker.
Instead of a 0.6% decline in the
first quarter, nominal GDP went
down by a whopping 2.9%. In the
final quarter of 2014, it eked out a
scant 0.4% gain compared to the
2.2% rise in real GDP.
Derek Burleton, deputy chief
economist at TD, said there haven’t
been two consecutive quarterly
contractions–a widely used definition of “recession”–in nominal
GDP, but there’s clear downward
pressure on corporate earnings and
government revenues in areas with
a heavy concentration of energy activity that began late last year.
The fallout of lower oil prices is
now “rippling through” labor markets in energy-intensive provinces,
he said.
(Source: WSJ)
PICTURE OF THE DAY
Contd. from P. 1
Saudi Arabia must
cut oil output if Iran’s
exports reach level
before sanctions
By Shana
TEHRAN STOCK EXCHANGE
Index
Main Board
Index
Industry Index
Overall Index
Value
Change
45798.7
Percent
-9.1
-0.02
52312.7
-22.6
-0.04
63810.7
-25.5
-0.04
Free Float Index
72901.8
-31.6
-0.04
Secondary
Index
133174.1
-109.9
-0.08
OVERALL INDEX DETAILS
63836.2
First
63858.7
Max Value
Min Value
63808.5
Closing
63810.7
(25.5)
Variety
The North Oil Terminal, located neighboring the Caspian Sea, is the largest oil terminal in northern Iran, having the capacity
to load and unload crude oil, fuel oil, diesel, gasoline, and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG).
700.99%
Change end of year(%)
89500.6 (2014/01/05)
Historical highest
Source: tse.ir
Currency
To U.S.
Dollars
US dollar
British Pound
To IR.
Rial*
To U.S.
Dollars
Currency
To IR.
Rial*
1
32690
UAE dirham
0.272
8900
1.587
51820
Euro
1.135
37050
*The free market rates
(Sources: Mehrnews.com & xe.com)
MAJOR COMMODITIES
Light Crude $ / barrel
Gold $ / troy ounce
Copper $ / pound
59.37
1,199.80
2.57
Silver $ / troy ounce
Platinum $ / troy ounce
Wheat ¢ / bushel
16.05
1,084.50
492.75
Source: cnnmoney.com
NEWS IN BRIEF
MAJOR CURRENCIES
McDonald’s
says number
of U.S.
restaurants
will shrink
this year
McDonald’s Corp said
WSJ seeing
that it will have fewer
restaurants in the United cuts, shifting
resources
States in 2015 than it did
last year. A company
spokeswoman, in an
email, did not specify
the extent of the U.S.
restaurant downsizing
but said: “The impact is
minimal in comparison
to the 14,000 restaurants
we operate across
the country.” In April,
McDonald’s announced
350 restaurant closings in
the United States, China
and Japan, in addition to
the 350 closings it had
planned globally.
members of OPEC have discussed
the return of a binding quota
system for the group once Iran is
free from sanctions such a deal
will be tough to negotiate.
Meanwhile the Iranians are
sweetening the terms of their
contracts for IOCs to come invest
and develop the country’s oil
fields.
According to the IEA, Iran
has recently unveiled a new
contract model called the Iranian
Petroleum Contract (IPC) to entice
companies such as Royal Dutch
Shell, Total and BP to return. “The
purpose of the new framework
is to attract foreign investment
with a contract that contains
terms similar to a PSA (Production
Sharing Agreement),” said the EIA
in its report.
Although the terms of the new
deal are still open to negotiation
and change it is understood that
the Iranians are keen to offer
IOC’s a better deal in return for
their investment and technology.
(Source: telegraph.co.uk)
The Wall Street Journal
and its Dow Jones parent
announced an unspecified
number of job cuts and the
closing of some foreign
bureaus as they shift
resources into digital.
A memo to staff from
Gerard Baker, editor-inchief at the Journal and
Dow Jones, offered no
specific numbers, but said
a reorganization would
mean “reductions in staff
and elimination of certain
positions” to adapt to a
media landscape which
“continues to change at a
dizzying pace.”
A former official at the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) says if Iran's
oil exports reach the pre-sanctions
level, Saudi Arabia will have to decrease its crude output.
Fereydoun Barkeshli, NIOC’s former general manager for OPEC and
international affairs, emphasized that
should Iran's oil production reach
pre-sanctions level, “there is no
doubt that Saudi Arabia will have to
cut back production.”
Barkeshli, who is currently a private energy consultant and president
of Vienna Energy Research Group,
stressed that when the Islamic Republic returns to the global oil market
with pre-sanctions level of production "Saudi Arabia will be required
to reduce crude production to open
space for Iran."
He added that, in fact, Saudi Arabia might be willing to cooperate in
this regard so as to “provide some
breathing space for its own oil fields
which are already under pressure due
to excessive production.”
(Source: Albawaba)
Rising
gasoline
prices drive
U.S. inflation
higher
A surge in gasoline prices
pushed U.S. consumer
inflation modestly higher
in May, the fourth month
in a row of gains, the
Labor Department said.
The consumer price
index (CPI) rose 0.4
percent in May, almost
entirely driven by a 10.4
percent jump in gasoline
prices, rebounding from
a decline in April.
Food prices were
unchanged for a second
straight month.
Compared with a year
ago, overall CPI was
unchanged.
h t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m
JUNE 22, 2015
HISTORY & HERITAGE
Casual Iran is friendly and interesting
to visit: Argentinean couple
INTERVIEW
By Setareh Behroozi
Adriana Bata and Miguel Angel Cinquantini, respectively 35 and 45, travelled Iran in September 2014.
They began travelling around the world since July
2014. “In this long trip we visit, till now, Italy, Greece,
Turkey, Iran, India, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore
and Cambodia,” they said in an interview with the
Tehran Times.
They had travelled Turkey and they decided to visit Iran as well. “Because is near and is an interesting
country. Why not visiting?” they answered.
“Main news that is heard abroad are negative and
shows a dangerous Iran but the casual country is
friendly and interesting to visit,” they said.
The dress code and respecting Islamic rules including “Hijab” in Iran was somehow strange for
them as non-Muslim tourists. However they said that
they have “all nice memories and are the moments
we spend with the people that host us in Tabriz, Zanjan and Tehran.”
They called “Iranian people” as the best memory
they have from the country.
“Because they host us in their houses, they open
your hearts and show us the places with the local
view and not like simple tourists,” they added.
In their view, the historical sites in Iran were great
especially in Tabriz, Zanjan and Tehran.
“Take cash money because (it) is not possible to
withdraw from banks or use the international credit
Adriana and Miguel visit the Soltanieh Dome in
Zanjan during their trip to Iran in September 2014
(Photo: Adriana Bata)
and debit cards,” they advised tourists who want to
travel the country.
The Persian cuisines are one of the sweetest part of
their trip. “We think the Iranian food is very tasteful.”
“We hope to visit Iran again with more time to
know more about its places, culture and people,”
they concluded.
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.
Price Competitiveness in the Tourism and Travel
Industry is the lower costs related to travel in a country increase its attractiveness for many travelers as
well as for investing in the T&T sector.
Iran made it onto the top destination lists of major publications such as The Financial Times and The
Guardian last year thanks to sights that include
2,500-year old ruins at Persepolis near Shiraz
and 16th-century Islamic architectural gems in
Isfahan.
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.
Sekanjabin: A sweet and sour ancient Persian syrup and drink
Sekanjabin is one of the oldest sweet and
sour syrups in Iran, dating back to the ancient times. It is a combination of serkeh
(vinegar) and angabin, which refers to
honey and the natural honey sweet.
Sekanjabin and its drink (sharbat-e sekanjabin) are usually served during the summer.
There are many different recipes for
Sekanjabin/sekanjebin. Some like it more
on the sweet side and some like it sourer, it all depends on your taste.
A kind of Sekanjabin is made of sugar
and vinegar.
In a heavy bottom pot combine sugar
and water, place on medium heat and
stir till sugar is dissolved. Reduce heat
and gently boil for 10-15 minutes.
Add 1/2 cup of vinegar and simmer for 25-30
minutes or until it thickens. Taste and adjust the
level of sweetness or sourness of the syrup.
In the last minute or two add a small
bunch of fresh mint to the syrup.
4. Remove from heat and let cool completely. Remove the mint leaves.
Serve with lots of crisp and fresh lettuce on the side. Just to remind you, se-
kanjabin is quite sticky!
You can use it as a drink as well. Place
a couple of tablespoons of the syrup in
a glass, add some ice, water, shredded
cucumber, mix well and garnish with a
small stem of mint and lime rind.
Another version of Sekanjabin is with
honey and vinegar.
Follow the same directions used in
above for sekanjabin and its drink (sharbat). Remove the foams with a spoon as
they form on top. The aroma of the honey
gently simmering on the stove fills up the
entire house and is quite intoxicating!
Sekanjabin can be preserved in a glass
jar and kept in a cool place for a long time.
(Source: turmericsaffron.blogspot.co.uk)
INTERNATIONAL DAILY
5
C L O S E - U P
Egyptian Ramadan:
A brief guide
Ramadan has many rich traditions which support Muslims in their fasting, developed over many centuries. They
evoke a very special spiritual time, and will often trigger
nostalgia and emotion.
The Ramadan lantern
The ‘Fanous’ of Ramadan is one of the most captivating of the Ramadan traditions. It is said that Egyptians
welcomed the arrival of Caliph Moezzeddin Allah to Cairo
in 969 by lighting hundreds of lanterns.
Since that time, the
fanous has been a staple
of the many traditions
that characterize the Holy
month of Ramadan.
According to some
tales the Fatimid Caliph
Al-Hakim bi Amr Al-Lah,
who wanted the streets
of Cairo illuminated during
the nights of Ramadan. He
ordered all the mosques
to hang fawanees (lanterns) that could be lit by
candles. Another account tells of the Fatimid Caliph’s
going out into to the streets to sight the crescent moon
of Ramadan, accompanied by children holding fawanees
and sing Ramadan songs.
Firing the cannon
The firing of cannon, sometimes known as ‘Haja
Fatemah’, marks sunrise and sunset, and therefore signals the time for beginning and ending the fast. Although
an Egyptian custom by origin, it has now spread to other
countries.
When the Mamluk Sultan Al-Zaher Seif Al-Din Zenki
Khashqodom received cannon from a German acquaintance, his soldiers tested it by firing it at sunset, which
happened to be in Ramadan and so co-incised with the
time for breaking fast.
The inhabitants of Cairo thought the Sultan was
alerting them to the time for iftar. Realising that such
a custom could increase the popularity of the Sultan,
dignitaries suggested to him that he should continue
the practice.
It is said the Sultan’s wife Haja Fatemah received them
when they came to deliver their suggestion as the Sultan
was not home, and so the cannon is now named after her.
(Source: ogilvynoor.com)
6
I NTE R NATI O NAL DAI LY
INTERNATIONAL
JUNE 22, 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
Dylann Roof and the white fear of a black takeover
By Jason Morgan Ward
I
n the most widely circulated
image of Dylann Roof, who is
charged with murdering nine African Americans at Charleston, S.C.’s
Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, the white 21-year-old
sports a jacket emblazoned with
flag patches from two failed white
supremacist states — Rhodesia
and apartheid-era South Africa. In
another shot, Roof appears to be
showing off a flag-festooned license
plate that pays homage to another
failed white supremacist regime —
the Confederate States of America.
When considered alongside the
words the gunman allegedly uttered before opening fire — the last
his nine victims heard on Earth —
the flags point to a deep history of
racial fear that Roof inherited and
embodied Wednesday night.
According to eyewitness accounts, Roof said, among other
things, “You’re taking over our
country.” Most observers, a gaggle
of dissembling politicians excepted,
have taken the killer’s own words
as evidence of racial motive, if not
pathology.
For most of the South’s history,
the fear of African Americans “taking over” has permeated mainstream political culture. That paranoia ran deepest in states like South
Carolina, where African Americans
constituted a majority of the population well into the 20 century.
Whites in Charleston certainly acted
on those fears in 1822, when they executed Denmark Vesey, a founding
member of Emanuel AME Church,
for plotting a slave rebellion. After
emancipation, white supremacists
stoked fears of “Negro domination”
to overthrow South Carolina’s interracial Reconstruction government.
The architects of Jim Crow enacted
disfranchisement measures such as
poll taxes and literacy tests as safeguards against the seemingly everpresent threat of another black
Indeed, for decades, the central lesson of white
supremacy was that any black engagement in public
life could and would ultimately destroy the nation.
takeover.
It is fitting, if coincidental, that
authorities apprehended Roof just
across the state line in Shelby, N.C.,
the birthplace of the man who arguably did more than anyone to sear
the specter of Negro domination
into the national consciousness.
Thomas Dixon’s “The Clansman,”
a novel set in Reconstruction-era
South Carolina, inspired the 1915
blockbuster film “Birth of a Nation”
and glorified white supremacist violence as a heroic response to black
civic participation. Few remember
Dixon’s apocalyptic final novel, “The
Flaming Sword,” which depicted
a Marxist-inspired, all-black “Nat
Turner Legion” overrunning the
South in the 1930s. Dixon died before he could complete his planned
trilogy, in which a white “Patriot Union” would presumably take America back.
By the 1930s, South Carolina
had lost its black majority to outmigration, but white supremacists
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continued to trade in fears of black
domination. In 1936, Sen. “Cotton Ed” Smith stormed out of the
Democratic National Convention
in Philadelphia after a local black
pastor rose to deliver the opening
invocation. The mere hint of black
inclusion in what Southerners regarded as the white man’s party
sparked threats of a mass political
defection.
In the early 1950s, South Carolina Democratic Gov. James F. Byrnes accused national party leaders
of adopting a socialistic platform
due solely to pressure from “Negro politicians … interested only
in race problems.” South Carolina
newspaperman William Workman,
a prominent segregationist who
defected to the Republican Party
by the early 1960s, decried black
activists’ growing political influence on both parties as proof of
the “distressing tyranny of the numerical minority.”
Contd. on P. 11
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
JUNE 22, 2015
INTERNATIONAL
Cold War resurgent: U.S. nukes
could soon return to Europe
It's been more than three decades
since the vast peace protests took over
Bonn's Hofgarten meadow in the early
1980s. Back then, about half a million
protesters pushed their way into the city
center, a kilometer-long mass of people
moving through the streets. It was the
biggest rally in the history of the German
Federal Republic.
Today, the situation isn't quite that
fraught, but it seems feasible that a
similar scene may soon play out in front
of the Chancellery in Berlin. For some
time now, the Americans have once
again been thinking about upgrading
Europe's nuclear arsenal, and in the past
week, a rhetorical arms race has begun
that is reminiscent of the coldest periods
of the Cold War.
Foreign
Minister
Frank-Walter
Steinmeier warned of an "accelerating
spiral of escalating words and then of
actions." He described them as "the old
reflexes of the Cold War."
Berlin is concerned that Europe
could once again become the setting
of a new East-West confrontation -- and
that Germany might once again become
a deployment zone. A source in the
Defense Ministry suggested that "more
(military) equipment may once again
be stockpiled in Germany." Washington
plans to station tanks, weapons and
heavy equipment for 5,000 soldiers
in Germany and the eastern NATO
countries. U.S. President Barack Obama
hopes that doing so will soothe the
fears of the Baltic States and countries in
Eastern Europe, which, since the Ukraine
crisis, are once again fearful of Russian
aggression. He also hopes to quiet his
critics in U.S. Congress.
For German Chancellor Angela
Merkel, this prospect is not a pleasant
one. She shies away from publicly
criticizing her American allies, but
Merkel is loathe to do anything
that might heat up the conflict with
Moscow. Furthermore, a new debate
on rearmament would hardly be
winnable on a domestic front. The
chancellor would potentially look like a
puppet of the United States, one who
not only allows herself to be spied on,
but who also stands by as her carefully
established link to Putin is damaged.
Avoiding open disagreement
Moscow sees the American plans
as a further proof that Washington
intends to expand its military sphere of
influence in Europe. Foreign Minister
Sergei Lavrov's spokesman has said that
"Washington and its partners are clearly
aiming for the final break-up of the
NATO-Russia Founding Act."
Berlin, however, does not want to
abandon the treaty. Consistent with
the treaty, the German government
has fundamentally ruled out the
"substantial" or "permanent" stationing
of NATO troops in the former Eastern
Bloc. That wording was chosen to
assuage Russian concerns about NATO's
eastward expansion.
The U.S. plans appear designed
with an eye toward avoiding an open
disagreement. That is why Washington
only intends to send a few companies
to the border nations, say sources at
NATO headquarters in Brussels. The
larger part of the brigade will be initially
stationed in Grafenwohr, in the German
region of Upper Palatinate. The same is
apparently true of the heavy weaponry.
The Bundeswehr, Germany's armed
forces, estimates that it will include
approximately 100 battle tanks. The
German Defense Ministry believes that
U.S. Defense Minister Ashton Carter will
be discussing the details with German
Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen
during his visit on Monday.
Still, many NATO member states
are critical of the plans, particularly in
Western Europe. Internally, some are
warning against escalating the conflict
with Russia. Stationing weapons in
Europe is not characteristic of "an exit
strategy," said Luxembourg Prime
Minister Xavier Bettel on Tuesday during
a visit to Berlin.
The new U.S. plans are only the latest
step in an overall period of rearmament,
a dangerous development that had
already started before the outbreak
of the Ukraine crisis. Washington and
Moscow have cancelled or undermined
one disarmament treaty after another.
The end of the Cold War saw the signing
of a number of far-reaching agreements
pertaining to conventional and nuclear
INTERNATIONAL DAILY
7
COMMENT
Napoleon Bonaparte,
French emperor
By Simon Schama
W
disarmament, from the Treaty on
Conventional Armed Forces in Europe
to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.
But now, the agreements, some of
which took decades to hammer out, are
losing their value. "Moscow no longer
believes the West and the West doesn't
believe Moscow. That's terrible," Mikhail
Gorbachev told SPIEGEL in January. "If
one side loses its nerves in this inflamed
atmosphere, then we won't survive the
coming years," he said.
Wild threats
At issue are longer just conventional
weapons, but also nuclear arms as well.
Moscow is working on modernizing its
nuclear arsenal, and has issued some
wild threats. A high-ranking official in
the Russian Foreign Ministry spoke in
March about possibly stationing nuclear
weapons in Crimea. And the Americans,
too, are considering expanding their
nuclear arsenal in Europe. For some time
now, Washington has been thinking
about positioning nuclear-equipped
cruise missiles in Europe, as it did in 1979
during the NATO Double-Track decision
that led the trans-Atlantic alliance into
the worst crisis in its history.
The American logic is as follows:
For some time now, Washington has
been accusing Russia of violating the
Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces
Treaty (INF). The legendary agreement,
which was signed by former U.S.
president Ronald Reagan and Mikhail
Gorbachev in 1987, signaled the end
of the Cold War. In the agreement,
both superpowers agreed to scrap all
land-based intermediate-range atomic
weapons and to renounce them in
the future. Now Washington believes
this treaty has been violated, and is
threatening to react. NATO Supreme
Allied Commander Europe Philip
Breedlove has already announced
that the introduction of a weapon
meeting in February, the Germans and
the French spoke out against NATO
retaliatory measures, not least because
there was only shaky proof of what
weapons the Russians had actually
tested.
The allies are having trouble
evaluating whether Moscow actually
has violated the INF Treaty, which the
Russians vehemently deny. Although
none of the European intelligence
services have better surveillance
capabilities than the Americans, nobody
wants to rely purely on U.S. findings. It
has become known that Washington is
particularly concerned about the R-500
cruise missile, with an estimated range
of 500 kilometers, and the RS-26 ballistic
missile, which could threaten the entire
NATO territory. The U.S. believes that
both have been tested in a manner that
violates the INF Treaty.
Casting doubt
The Europeans don't think that's
necessarily the case. Members of NATO's
Nuclear Planning Group concluded
during the last ministers meeting that
the refurbishment planned by Moscow
does not violate any treaty. Weapons
expert Oliver Meier, from the German
Institute for International and Security
Affairs (SWP) in Berlin, also doubts the
U.S. claims: "The RS-26 definitely does
not violate the INF Treaty," he says.
But President Obama is under
enormous pressure from Congress,
with lawmakers accusing Obama of
being far too willing to give in to Putin.
During a hearing several months ago, a
number of representatives repeatedly
interrupted Under Secretary of State for
Arms Control and International Security
Rose Gottemoeller.
But Moscow too is increasingly
casting doubt on the INF Treaty. "It is
only a scrap of paper," says military
expert Victor Murachovski. "If NATO
that violates the INF Treaty "can't go
unanswered."
"We would like Russia, and our
Allies, to know that our patience is not
unlimited," said Frank Rose, who is in
charge of arms control at the State
Department, a few weeks ago. And
Principal Deputy Under Secretary of
Defense at the Pentagon Brian Mckeon
announced that Washington would
develop a response to safeguard the
security interests of the United States
and its allies and that such a response
would involve the stationing of landbased cruise missiles in Europe.
In Europe, these considerations
are being viewed critically. When the
Americans placed the subject on the
agenda of the NATO defense ministers
planes can now already reach Saint
Petersburg in five minutes from Estonia,
and NATO warships are cruising around
the Baltic Sea and Black Sea, then this
agreement is worthless for Russia."
In German military circles, though,
people are interpreting the Russian
saber-rattling as a sign of weakness.
Unlike during the Cold War, the Russians
do not have as many conventional
weapons as NATO. In response, Moscow
-- like the West during the Cold War -intends to rely on nuclear deterrence.
The Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND),
Germany's foreign intelligence agency,
currently does "not see any substantial
change to the danger" posed by Russia.
The nuclear threats by Moscow -- Putin
announced his intention to acquire
Washington is once again talking about stationing
nuclear warheads in Europe. Russia, too, is turning
up the rhetoric. Europeans are concerned about
becoming caught in the middle of a new Cold War.
40 intercontinental missiles -- were
described by BND Vice-President Guido
Müller, in a secret meeting in front of
select lawmakers, as little more than a
"propaganda show."
According
to
Muller,
the
refurbishment plans are well known.
Since a speech by Putin at the end of
2014, the upgrade has been seen as a
fait accompli by the German intelligence
agency. But analysts at the BND believe
the chances of success are not high:
Purely from a technical standpoint,
the modernization of the 40 nuclear
warheads in such a short period of time
is hardly possible, the BND vice-president
said. Russia experts at the BND describe
it as "passive aggressive behavior."
What's important to Putin is its effect on
his opponent, not the degree to which
his statements are true.
'A great deal of concern'
For the German government, the
prospect of nuclear rearmament would
be a nightmare. In the early 1980s,
millions of people in Germany, as well
as in Italy and the Netherlands, took
to the streets because they feared a
nuclear war in Europe. As an answer to
the Soviet SS-20 nuclear missiles, the
Western allies had provided Moscow
with a proposal: They were prepared
to negotiate about the disarmament of
these types of systems, but if the Soviet
side wasn't prepared to compromise,
the West would station about 600
nuclear missiles on its side. And that's
exactly what happened.
For the German government, even
the discussion about intermediate-range
missiles is touchy. A huge majority of
Germans don't want new American
nuclear weapons in Europe. On the
contrary, they would prefer to see the
last American B-61 atomic bombs stored
near Buchel, in western Germany,
removed.
The Social Democrats in particular
remember the NATO Double-Track
Decision with horror. It indirectly cost
Chancellor Helmut Schmidt his office in
1982, and led the SPD to the precipice of
division. It also contributed significantly
to the rise of the Green Party. A new
rearmament would test the party's
ability to stay together, and also erase all
chance of a new coalition with the Green
Party for the foreseeable future. Rolf
Mutzenich, deputy floor leader of the
SPD in German parliament, is watching
developments with "a great deal of
concern."
At the end of the 1970s, NATO's
armament plans were tied to an offer
of dialogue. Today too, the West is
emphasizing the need to remain in talks
with Putin, but the venues that existed
for such dialogue before Ukraine
crisis, like the G-8 and the NATO-Russia
Council, have all been put on ice. For this
reason, Green politician Jurgen Trittin
is pushing the German government to
immediately begin an initiative to revive
the NATO-Russia Council. "We are
experiencing a dynamic that can quickly
lead to a real arms race," the senior
Green Party member warns. Measures
need to be put into place, he believes,
to interrupt the "tit-for-tat" spiral. For
this, the NATO-Russia Council would
once again need to become a "site
of dialogue." What's needed at the
moment, he argues, is "talking instead
of arming."
(Source: Spiegel Online)
hen William Hazlitt heard the outcome of the
Battle of Waterloo, it plunged the greatest
English prose writer of his age into such despair that
he went on a drunken bender. His revenge was an
unreadable multi-volume hagiography of Napoleon
that
entombed
the
Emperor
more
completely than would
the sepulchre at the
Invalides. Even among
those who detested
the reactionary victors
as much as the imperial
despot, Hazlitt was in a
minority.
For
the
radical
republican Shelley, the
revolutionary Napoleon
had become just another
tawdry monarch. When
Beethoven heard that
Napoleon had declared himself emperor, he
tore off the title page of Eroica, which had been
dedicated to “Buonaparte”, saying: “So he is no
more than a common mortal. Now he too will
trample underfoot the rights of man, indulge only
his ambition.”
And yet however many stakes have been put
through the heart of the Napoleonic legend, it
refuses to lie down. The image of the military
genius, the great administrator who reshaped
Europe, making it fit for the modern age, lives on.
He is the subject of glowing television tributes, and
championed as the type of leader so lacking in a
Europe ravaged by crises.
Sylvie Bermann, the French ambassador to the
UK, recently had the brass to claim that were he
alive today Napoleon would have fought for the
preservation of the EU since he was driven by the
dream of a “united Europe”.
Well, yes — if your idea of a united Europe is the
wholly owned subsidiary of a militarist dynasty, with
its brothers and sundry marshals on its thrones; a
vast autocratic empire run by bureaucrats and from
barracks, all financed by “indemnities” laid on the
conquered as the bill for their own “liberation”;
your masterpieces — Rubens, Veronese, Titian —
hauled off to the Louvre in Paris, the only city fit to
be the culture capital of the world; your manpower
marched off to some godforsaken calamity in the
Russian snows or the burning uplands of Spain at
the snap of imperial fingers.
That Napoleon, the supposed deliverer of liberty
and equality, all wrapped up in the tricolor, was
the mortal enemy of freedom there can be no
argument. When in 1799, the 30-year-old general
came to power through the coup of 18th Brumaire,
there were 70 newspapers in Paris. Bonaparte said
there was need for but one — the Moniteur, the
official tool of his propaganda — and closed down
all but a handful of lickspittle flatterers.
His police and spies were everywhere, deadening
cultural life in Paris. Theatres were shut the minute
they dared to perform anything that could be
construed as critical of the regime. Napoleonic
Paris was a showplace for grandiose architecture
but the cemetery of independently conceived art
and ideas.
Ah, sigh the Napoleonomanes wringing their
hands and dabbing their eyes, liberty had to die so
that equality might live. Unless, that is you were
black or a woman. In 1802 Napoleon reinstated
slavery; two years later he liquidated one of
the Revolution’s most precious achievements:
divorce by mutual consent. The Civil Code made
wives more the prisoners of their husbands than
in the old regime. They no longer had any right
to their property in marriage and had to ask their
husbands’ permission to take the stand in legal
proceedings.
The empire was socially reactionary. It reestablished the Catholic Church and fawned on
any of the old aristocracy willing to “rally” to its
autocracy. It kept careers open to talent, but the
acme of everything — fortune, status, honor —
was the army. Napoleon set the tone on the eve of
his first campaign in Italy when he sounded like a
pirate chief, promising booty: “Soldiers, you are ill
clad, ill paid, I am going to lead you into the richest
plains of the world where lie all of your glory and
fortune.”
Militarization spread like poison through French
society. Education which had been inspiringly
modernized by the Revolution surrendered to
absolute uniformity of curriculum and the cult of
uniform. Students were summoned to classes by
the drum roll.
So when the French ambassador imagined
that Napoleon and his regime were some sort of
template for the EU she inadvertently put her finger
on the problem. For the habits of bureaucratic
centralization, uniformity of regulation, the
unquestioned superiority of administrative elites
do indeed die hard.
Napoleon moved through Europe, shuffling
boundaries and states as he went, oblivious to
the histories, traditions, languages, customs and
sentiments which were and are the warm pulse of
national community.
Contd. on P. 11
8
I NTE R NATI O NAL DAI LY
IN
THE
NEWS
Scalevo wheelchair uses
retractable tracks
to climb stairs
We’ve seen tracked wheelchairs before that are able
to take on steep or uneven terrain. For regular surfaces, however, wheels make more sense. That’s why
a group of students from
ETH Zurich and the Zurich
University of the Arts are
creating the Scalevo electric wheelchair, which
features wheels for cruising and tracks for climbing stairs.
When
on
smooth
ground, the Scalevo balances Segway-style on its
two wheels – this setup
aids in agility, allowing
it to make sharp turns.
Upon reaching a flight of
stairs, however, its twin
rubber tracks descend from its undercarriage to carry
it over them. In order to keep the user level while this
is happening, a set of pistons tilt the chair back relative
to the tracks, compensating for the slant of the stairs.
The mechanical and electrical engineering students
now have a working prototype and are planning to use
it next year in the Cybathlon, an ETH-sponsored race
for disabled athletes using assistive devices. There’s
no word on whether or not they plan on commercializing the technology.
The wheelchair can be seen in use, in the video below. Although it climbs stairs pretty slowly right now,
the team hopes to ultimately attain a speed of one
step per second.
(Source: Gizmag)
Researchers build sensor
to diagnose effective drugs
for cancer
TEHRAN (ISNA) — Iranian researchers have designed
a bio-sensor which can be used in measuring drugs effects on stability of DNA Shroud-laid structure to prevent cancer cells growth.
The method is economic and with high precision
and has applied gold nano-particles.
DNA Shroud-laid structure is playing a leading role
in curbing an enzyme which causes cancers.
The Iranian researchers have developed a more effective method to diagnose DNA Shroud-laid structure
using bio-sensors. The method was also used to investigate performance of a number of drugs making the
structure more stable.
The results of the electro-chemical studies showed
that the biosensor can pave the way for investigating
different drugs which make the structure more stable.
The sensor can quickly diagnose drugs which are
capable of stabilizing DNA Shroud-laid structure and
react with it.
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JUNE 22, 2015
h t t p : / / w w w . t e h r a n t i m e s . c o m
Researchers unravel graphene
heat-transfer riddle
TEHRAN (ISNA) — Iranian researchers along with
their colleagues at the University of Illinois, the
University of Massachusetts-Amherst and Boise
State University have solved the long-standing
conundrum of how the boundary between grains
of graphene affects heat conductivity in thin films
of the miracle substance -- bringing developers
a step closer to being able to engineer films at a
scale useful for cooling microelectronic devices
and hundreds of other nano-tech applications.
Since its discovery, graphene -- a single layer of
carbon atoms linked in a chicken-wire pattern -- has
attracted intense interest for its phenomenal ability
to conduct heat and electricity. Virtually every nanotech device could benefit from
In a two-year,
graphene’s extraordinary ability to
multidisciplinary dissipate heat and optimize electronic function, said Poya Yasaei,
investigation,
UIC graduate student in mechanithe researchers
cal and industrial engineering and
first author on the paper.
developed a
In a two-year, multidisciplinary
technique to
investigation, the researchers
measure heat
developed a technique to measure heat transfer across a single
transfer across
grain boundary -- and were sura single grain
prised to find that it was an order
of magnitude -- a full 10 times -boundary.
lower than the theoretically predicted value. They then devised computer models
that can explain the surprising observations from
the atomic level to the device level.
Graphene films for nanotech applications are
made up of many tiny graphene crystals, said
Amin Salehi-Khojin, UIC assistant professor of mechanical and industrial engineering and principal
investigator on the study. Producing films large
enough for practical use introduces flaws at the
boundaries between the crystals that make up
the film.
Experimental system
Salehi-Khojin’s team developed a finely tuned experimental system that lays down a graphene film
Dr. Amin
Salehi-Khojin
onto a silicon-nitrate membrane only four-millionths
of an inch thick and can measure the transfer of
heat from one single graphene crystal to another.
The system is sensitive to even the tiniest perturbations, such as a nanometer-scale grain boundary,
said co-author Reza Hantehzadeh, a former UIC
graduate student now working at Intel.
When two crystals are neatly lined up, heat
transfer occurs just as predicted by theory. But if
the two crystals have mis-aligned edges, the heat
transfer is 10 times less.
To account for the order-of-magnitude difference, a team led by Fatemeh Khalili-Araghi, UIC
assistant professor of physics and co-principal
investigator on the paper, devised a computer
simulation of heat transfer between grain boundaries at the atomic level.
Khalili-Araghi’s group found that when the
computer “built” grain boundaries with different
mismatch angles, the grain boundary was not just
a line, it was a region of disordered atoms. The
presence of a disordered region significantly affected the heat transfer rate in their computer
model and can explain the experimental values.
“With larger mismatched angles, this disordered region could be even wider or more disordered,” she said.
To realistically simulate mismatched grain boundaries and natural heat transfer, it was necessary to
model the synthesis of a large area of graphene
film, with grains growing and coalescing -- a very
complex simulation, Khalili-Araghi said, which required the “enormous computing power” of UIC’s
High Performance Computing Cluster.
“With our simulation we can see exactly what
is going on at an atomic level,” said co-author Arman Fathizadeh, UIC postdoctoral research associate in physics. “Now we can explain several
factors — the shape and size of the grain boundaries, and the effect of the substrate.
A new mass extinction
could be underway, researchers say
New HIV vaccine
may stop the virus infection
Sixty-five million years ago, the dinosaurs disappeared in what’s known
as the Earth’s fifth mass extinction.
Today, a sixth mass extinction
could be well underway and humans
are the likely culprit, according to
new research published in Science
Advances.
The past five mass extinctions on
Earth were caused by large-scale natural disasters like meteors or enormous chains of volcanic eruptions,
wiping out between half and 96% of
all living species.
But the modern mass extinction
isn’t being caused by a freak act of
nature, the researchers say. It’s being caused by man-made changes
to the environment including deforestation, poaching, overfishing and
global-warming, and it’s proving to
be just as deadly.
Recently, species like the Emperor
Rat, the Desert Rat Kangaroo, the
Yangtze River Dolphin, the Skunk
Frog and the Chinese Paddlefish,
amongst hundreds of others, are believed to have become extinct.
About 477 vertebrate species
have been lost since 1900, according
to the research by Gerardo Ceballos,
HIV can pass undetected by the immune system and is able to quickly
mutate into new strains.
The joint efforts of scientists from
multiple research organizations in
the U.S. have led to the discovery of
a possible way of blocking the spread
of HIV (the human immunodeficiency
virus).
The study published in the journals
Cell and Science was conducted by
researchers from IAVI (International
AIDS Vaccine Initiative), Rockefeller
University and TSRI (the Scripps Research Institute).
So far scientists have used in other
experiments a microbe which was
dead or inactive in order to trigger
the antibodies production. However
this could not be applied in the case
of HIV because the natural proteins
of the viral strain cannot trigger the
expected immune response.
HIV can pass undetected by the
immune system and is able to quickly
mutate into new strains.
In order to deal with this problem
researchers thought of using immunogen proteins in order to help the
body generate antibodies which can
neutralize HIV. For this to be possible
a senior ecological researcher at the
National Autonomous University of
Mexico, and Anthony Barnosky, a biology professor at Berkeley.
If humans were not the primary
source of these extinctions, there
should’ve only been nine species going
extinct during the same time period.
Biodiversity provides critical functions, including the air in the atmosphere and purifying drinking water
-- life as we know it depends on having high levels of species diversity,
scientists say.
Species loss
“People think nothing bad will
come from species loss, because scientists can’t predict exactly how many
need to go extinct before the world
collapses,” says Ceballos. The “problem is that our environment is like a
brick wall. It will hold if you pull individual bricks, but eventually it takes just
one to make it suddenly fall apart.”
While extinction is a natural function of life, this is the first time humans are being confronted with
species loss at rates that are 1,000 to
10,000 times faster than what is considered the natural rate.
(Source: CNN)
the patient must be exposed several
times to the immunogen.
Immunogen protein
The researchers tested an immunogen protein known as eOD-GT8
60mer on mice. eOD-GT8 60mer can
bind an activate the B cells which
are needed to fight HIV. Using B cell
sorting the scientists observed how
the protein managed to trigger the
production of the needed antibodies which could block the spreading
of HIV. This can be applied in the first
stage of immunization.
After the lab mice were injected
the researchers observed their reaction over a period of time. It seems
that the animals started neutralizing
the HIV strain the moment they came
across it.
With this discovery it seems that
researchers have developed a way
of in which to accelerate the defense
system of the body so as to make it
curb the HIV infection. The lead researchers of the study were Professors David Nemazee and Dennis Burton from TSRI, Michel Nussenzweig
from Rockefeller University and Willian Schief from IAVI.
(Source: The Wall Street Hedge)
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Regular consumption of cocoa may lessen risks of cardiovascular diseases
Recent study revealed that consuming cocoa lessens
the risks of cardiovascular diseases and strokes.
University of Aberdeen in England researcher have
discovered that eating 100 grams of chocolate everyday can help lower any cardiovascular disease by 11
percent and 23 percent for the risk of stroke. Lastly, it
could also lessen the mortality risk by 25 percent.
Dr. Phyo Myint, co-author of the study, explained
that consuming chocolates should not be a problem to
people’s cardiovascular health because cocoa do not
have any harmful effects but must be consume in mod-
eration.
For the study, they examined the data they have
gathered from 21,000 British adult participants in the
EPIC-Norfolk study.
Also, researchers have reviewed the international
published evidence on the links between chocolate
and cardiovascular disease, involving nearly 158,000
people, according to University Herald.
They have found out that 12 percent of the participants who ate chocolates developed or died of cardiovascular disease while the study is ongoing, while 17.4
of them did not consume chocolate and died of cardiovascular disease as well. People who are eating 16 to
100 grams of chocolate on a regular basis have gained
the highest health benefits, Times Gazette reported.
However, the polyphenols in chocolate and its function need to have further examination. Jo Ann Manson,
chief of the Division of Preventive Medicine at Brigham
and Women’s Hospital in Boston believed that it does
not really induce a cause-and-effect between chocolate and reduced risk of any heart condition.
(Source: YIBADA)
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
S
JUNE 22, 2015
P
O
R
T
S
Parviz Mazloumi takes charge of
Esteghlal football team
Parviz Mazloumi has been ap-
S p o r t D e s k pointed as the new head coach
of Esteghlal football team on Sunday.
While Croatian coach Igor Stimac was supposed to announce as the new coach of Esteghlal,
he didn’t reach a final agreement with the club
officials over financial issues.
“I want to take Eteghlal to its glory days and
in order to achieve this we should sign a couple
of players to strengthen the squad. We have to
make fans happy again and I will try my best to
make this happen,” Mazloumi told reporters in
a press conference after appointing as Esteghlal
coach.
Mazloumi, who was in charge of Esteghlal
between 2010 to 2012, led the blue giant to one
second place finish and one third place finish in
the Iran Pro League as well as a Hazfi Cup title in
2011-12 season.
Esteghlal struggled over the past two seasons
under coach Amir Ghalenoei. It finished 6th in
last season and lost both Tehran derbies to archrival Persepolis.
Germanwings crash victim
Javadi laid to rest
Three months af-
S p o r t D e s k ter the German-
wings jet crashed in the French Alps,
remain of Iranian journalist Hossein
Javadi was laid to rest on his birthday
in Tehran’s Behesht-e Zahra cemetery.
Relatives of the victim, journalists
and sports officials attended the funeral on Saturday.
A jet operated by Germanwings
crashed in the French Alps on March
24, killing all 150 people on board.
Two Iranian sports journalists Milad Hojatoleslami and Hossein Javadi - had covered a Real Madrid - FC
Barcelona fixture and were on their
way to Austria to watch the Iranian
national team play Chile.
Two Croat players targeted
by Persepolis
TEHRAN — Two
S p o r t D e s k Croatian players
Ivan Krstanovic and Luka Maric have
been linked with summer moves to
Persepolis football team.
Krstanovic, 32, is a striker, who
has already played in Dinamo Zagreb, Rijeka and Zadar.
Maric is a 28-year-old defender,
who currently plays for Zawisza Bydgoszcz in Poland’s Ekstraklasa.
The players have traveled to Tehran to negotiate with Persepolis acting president Ali Akbar Taheri.
Persepolis Croatian coach Branko
Ivankovic is looking at new recruits
for the upcoming season of the Iran
professional League (IPL).
INTERNATIONAL DAILY
9
FORMULA 1
Fernando Alonso: I lost all
motivation at Ferrari
Fernando Alonso has credited McLaren with restoring the
motivation he lost after five years at Ferrari.
"I don't have any regrets because I'm happy now,"
the Spaniard told reporters after his team's dismal start
to the Formula One season and new partnership with
Honda showed no let-up in Saturday's Austrian Grand
Prix qualifying.
"I'm enjoying the weekends, I'm enjoying my job and I
need this motivation.
"I lost motivation last year. To be second or third for
so many years with not really any progress...without
motivation it is very difficult
to work and I have all that
back now," added the double champion.
Alonso has yet to score
a point in seven races this
season and McLaren, in a
new partnership with Honda, plumbed new depths
on Saturday when he and
Jenson Button picked up
25-place grid penalties.
At Ferrari, Alonso won
races and ended up second
in the championship in three seasons but the title was always out of reach.
The Spaniard said he was sad not to be fighting for the
podium but progress was being made.
"I see the Q3 (final phase of qualifying) normally on television unfortunately now," he added, expressing mock
sympathy for those who filled the top places.
"I saw the top three in the press conference and they
were very sad," he smiled. "They were angry. One because
he spun in turn one, one because he spun in the last corner
and the other because he's third whatever the conditions.
"I was in that position for five years," he said of Sebastian Vettel, third for Ferrari behind the dominant Mercedes
duo of champion Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg.
"So I am enjoying the challenge of being in this project
from zero, the very bottom because we are not very competitive, but if we can achieve something important together this will be fantastic and taste better."
McLaren's Racing Director Eric Boullier expected more
penalties in the coming races as McLaren and Honda wrestled with reliability.
"I'm pretty sure we're going to have a new record in the
Guinness book by the end of the season," said the Frenchman who felt the rules limiting engine development and
usage needed to change.
"We have to respect the rules but I find it sad for Formula One to have two world champions like Jenson and
Fernando sitting at the back of the grid."
(Source: Reuters)
Manchester United to sign Bastian Schweinsteiger
Manchester United are to land Bastian Schweinsteiger in a shock move; City are poised to meet Liverpool’s £50 million asking price for Raheem Sterling;
and Liverpool want to sign Fernando Llorente of Juventus – the top stories from Sunday’s papers.
‘United to land Schweinsteiger’ - Manchester Unit-
ed are nearing a £7.5million deal for Bayern Munich
star Bastian Schweinsteiger, according to a report
in the Sunday People. United boss Louis van Gaal is
confident he can lure his former player away from the
Allianz Arena and transfer negotiator Ed Woodward
has been tasked with making it happen. The Germany
Messi: I feel sorry for
Neymar
star is reportedly keen to link-up with Van Gaal, who
managed him when he was in charge at Bayern from
2009-2011. United will only have to pay £7.5m for the
midfielder and so Van Gaal believes it to be a bargain
worth prioritising early this summer.
(Source: Eurosport)
Ronaldinho looking for new club after
leaving Queretaro
Besiktas ‘preparing bid for
Mario Balotelli’
Liverpool forward Mario Balotelli is being linked with a
move to Turkish side Besiktas.
The Italy international will turn 25 in August, but his
future at Anfield is in doubt after just four goals in 28
competitive games.
His only Europa League strike was during a 1-0 victory
over Besiktas in February and that appears to have stuck
in their minds.
According to Turkish newspaper Haberturk, the Istanbul side are prepared to make a summer offer for SuperMario.
He would replace Demba Ba, who is looking for a return to the Premier League after just one season.
(Source: FootballItalia)
Andy Murray beats Viktor
Troicki after restart to
reach final
Lionel Messi admits he is sorry to see
Neymar ruled out of the remainder of
the Copa America.
Brazil captain Neymar was handed
a four-match suspension by Conmebol
following his red card and subsequent
verbal attack on a referee after his
side's 1-0 defeat to Colombia this week.
Argentina skipper Messi refused to
be drawn on the controversy surrounding the decision to ban his Barcelona
team-mate from the remainder from
the tournament but admitted it is a
blow for the 23-year-old.
"I do not want to comment on Neymar. He's a friend," Messi, who starred
alongside the Brazilian as Barca romped
to a treble this season, said after Argen-
tina's 1-0 win over Jamaica.
"I regret the punishment he was given and that he cannot participate any
further in the Copa America.
"He is a very important player for
Brazil. I know what it means to them to
have him on the field."
Brazil have the right to appeal the
suspension but even a successful plea
would likely only see his suspension
dropped to three games, which would
still rule him out until the final.
Brazil face Venezuela on Sunday in
their final group game hoping to secure a place in the quarter-finals, with
all four teams from Group C locked on
three points.
(Source: Goal)
Former FIFA world player of the
year Ronaldinho has terminated
his contract with Mexico's Queretaro and said goodbye in a letter
on his Facebook page.
Ronaldinho, a member of Brazil's 2002 World Cup winning team,
joined Queretaro last September
amid much fanfare and high hopes
and helped them to a surprise
place in the Clausura championship
final which they lost to Santos Laguna last month.
"I want to thank the Mexican
nation with all my heart for all the
days I spent with such special people, you will always be in my heart,"
Ronaldinho said in the letter, add-
ing that his contract with Queretaro was terminated on Friday.
A club director had said 10 days
ago that the plan was for the
35-year-old former Barcelona ace
to see out his one-year deal but
coach Victor Manuel Vucetich contradicted him by saying he wanted
players on the up and not in decline.
Ronaldinho joined Queretaro
from Atletico Mineiro, whom he
helped win their first South American Libertadores Cup in 2013 to
add to the European Champions
League he won with Barcelona in
2006.
(Source: Reuters)
Pepe Reina set for Napoli move
Pepe Reina will have a medical at Napoli ahead of a
switch from Bayern Munich, according to a report.
The former Liverpool goalkeeper spent last season warming the bench as Manuel Neuer played almost every match for Bayern.
Reina made just three appearances - and, embarrassingly, gave away a penalty and got sent off after
just 14 minutes of one of those, putting Bayern on
course for a a 1-0 defeat to Augsburg in May.
According to Sky Sport Italia, Reina will arrive in
Naples for a medical on Tuesday or Wednesday.
The 32-year-old previously spent a season on
loan at Napoli after being shipped out by Liverpool
in 2013/14.
(Source: footballitalia)
Andy Murray progressed through to his fourth final at
the Queen’s club after a 6-3 7-6 victory in his rain-delayed
semi-final against Viktor Troicki.
Murray’s quest for a fourth title at Queen’s will continue as he takes on South
Africa’s Kevin Anderson in
the showpiece match later
this afternoon.
The match resumed at
3-3 in the opening set after
rain intervened on Saturday evening with the former Wimbledon champion
having to play two matches in one day on Sunday as
a result.
Murray started the day
very brightly and raced
through the final three
games of the opening set
after play got back under way, but Troicki responded after his slow start.
The Serb pushed the British number one all the way in
the second set but was unable to push the match into a
decider as Murray took the tie-break 7-4.
Anderson, who has served a staggering 96 aces so far
at the London grass-court tournament, will likely pose a
real threat for Murray in the final.
(Source: Eurosport)
10
I NTE R NATI O NAL DAI LY
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
S O C I E T Y
JUNE 22, 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
No matter how hard life hits you in the
head, you get up, shake it off and run again
By Marjan Golpira
Your big opportunity may be right where you are now.
Napoleon Hill
LEARN ENGLISH
Talking About Sight
Sue: This medication I’m taking is messing with my vision. Everything is blurry.
Hamed: That’s a good reason for you to stay home
from work today.
Sue: I can’t. I have to give a presentation this afternoon and I can’t flake out on my coworkers.
Hamed: What good are you to them if you’re blind as
a bat?
Sue: Everybody else will have crystal clear vision, so all
I have to do is to put in an appearance. Things may not
be as sharp as I’d like them to be, but I can still make out
people and objects – as long as they’re really big.
Hamed: I don’t think your coworkers are going to want
you to blindside them today with your strange behavior.
You’re going to do more harm than good.
Sue: I can see well enough. I only see double if I move
my head like this. Whoa…
Hamed: At this point, I don’t care if you have X-ray vision. That medication is affecting more than your vision.
It’s impairing your better judgment!
(source: eslpod.com)
Words & Phrases
medication: a drug or other form of medicine that is
used to treat or prevent disease.
mess with: interfere with something, to make something more difficult for someone.
vision: the ability to see.
blurry: unable to see clearly.
flake out: to do something strange or not do what you
are expected to do.
blind as a bat: unable to see well.
crystal clear: extremely clear, very easy to understand.
to put in an appearance: to be present somewhere for
a short time, to appear in person.
Sharp: here it means clear; easy to see or understand.
make out: to see and identify with difficulty or effort.
to blindside: to surprise or shock (someone) in a very
unpleasant way.
to do more harm than good: to be damaging and not
helpful.
see double: to have a problem with your eyes so that
you see two of everything, usually because you are drunk
or ill.
X-ray vision: to have incredibly good eyesight, magically good eyesight.
impair: to make (something) weaker or worse
better judgment: the ability to know what is right and
wrong, or what you should do or say in a particular situation.
W O R D O F T H E D AY
hobbit
\HOB-it\
DEFINITION
(noun)
a member of a fictitious peaceful and genial race of
small humanlike creatures that dwell underground
Anthony attended the science-fiction and fantasy convention dressed as a hobbit.
“Jones’ 10x20 hobbit-style house comes equipped
with the iconic ivy-covered roof and many amenities indoors, including a washer/dryer, full kitchen, shower
room and even a flat screen TV.”
(Source: merriam-webster.com)
ENGLISH IDIOMS
butterflies in one’s
stomach
a nervous feeling in one’s stomach.
Examples
1) Whenever I have to speak in public, I get butterflies
in my stomach.
2) She always has butterflies in her stomach before
a test.
3) It was not frightening enough to give me butterflies
in my stomach, but it made me a little apprehensive.
lireza Mohammad Beiginia was
born on January 24th, 1971, in the
city of Natanz - in Isfahan Province.
Little did Mohammad know, like most
of us, what the future had in store for
him and that he was to spend the rest
of his life as a blind person, confined
to a world of darkness.
He was only 19 when a motorbike
crashed into him; a life changing accident that took his eye sight.
Since Beiginia’s family was barely
making ends meet, they could not afford taking their son abroad for further medical examinations and possible eye surgeries.
It took Beiginia some time to
come to terms with the new dark
world he had been plunged into
without being prepared for it. Compared to those who are born blind,
Beiginia’s case was more difficult to
bear.
“Congenitally blind people learn
from childhood how to cope with their
life the way it is,” Beiginia says.
“However, I did not know what to
do. I had grown up seeing, yet one day
that was taken away from me. I was
not ready at all for that.” He says.
“What makes blindness more difficult,” according to Beiginia, “is the
change in people’s attitude towards
you after you lose your sight; they no
longer see you the way they used to.”
“I dislike people showing pity towards me, I would like to be treated
like other people,” he complains.
“I have only lost one of my five
senses, people must respect the other
four,” he says sadly.
Finally, after some time, Beiginia understood that he had no other option
but to roll his sleeves up and fight for
his new life. He began to learn Braille
which he mastered in one week.
Another strategy was to change his
major, from food engineering to Persian literature which was easier for a
person of his condition to handle.
The next step, given the family’s
tight financial situation, was to find
work. He started his job search while
still at university.
It was tough, but after a lot of effort he was eventually hired as a Persian grammar teacher at a non-disabled high school in western Tehran;
Photo: by Sina Shiri
A
combining his teaching job while still
studying in Isfahan.
The reason he chose to teach in
Tehran rather than in Isfahan was because he thought Tehran was a larger
city that could provide him with more
facilities and better career prospects.
On the downside, he had to commute between the two cities twice a
week for several years until he earned
his MA degree.
It was then, that he could permanently move to the capital, Tehran,
where he now lives with his wife and
daughters. But as a whole it was a
good experience to be able as a blind
person to teach teenagers who were
able to see.
Besides his job as a high school
teacher in Tehran over the last few
years, Beiginia was a member of
Tehran´s Chess League, and for a
year he was in charge of the blind
section at Tehran’s National Library.
He also was a consultant for blind
students at Department of Education, as well as an Advisor to Welfare
Organization. He is currently the
chief editor of the weekly Hezareh
Sevom [The Third Millennium] and
its website, www.h3nn.ir.
Beiginia believes that the government can do a lot more to improve the
life condition of people with impaired
or poor vision. He indicates, for example, that the government must pave
the way for the employment of blind
people, 70 percent of whom are jobless.
He says it will be great if the government could offer some special benefits to employers; like tax exemption
to those companies which hire blind
people.
Another alternative, he thinks,
would be for the government to find
a way to encourage organizations and
companies to give priority to blind
people during recruitment.
Also, people with impaired vision
are usually not willing to participate
in social activities and their marriage
rate, according to Beiginia, is much
lower than that of other people.
He thinks the government has certain responsibility in preparing the
ground for these people to interact
more with others, where their chance
for finding a soul mate may increase.
As the editor of Hezareh Sevom,
Beiginia has always endeavored to
assist blind people with finding work,
a mission that he is seeking sponsors
for.
He thinks it would be much better
if decision and policy makers could put
themselves in blind people´s shoes, so
they could truly understand the problems that blind people face on a daily
basis from the bottom of their heart.
Beiginia also criticizes the cruel
sanctions imposed on Iran by the U.S.
and the West which have complicated
problems for blind people. He complains that a lot of the specialized software and TTS (text to speech, a form
of synthesis that coverts text into
spoken voice) used by blind people
are being supplied in 28 different languages except in Farsi.
The same goes for many of the
international journals and books in
Braille which have not been delivered
to Iran because of sanctions. This is
while many of those organizations
claiming to care for the disabled have
already followed the sanctions.
In the end, he hoped for an opportunity to get into a PhD program at a
reputable overseas university where
he could improve his skills and be of
more help to Iranians once he returns
to his homeland.
Elderly couple dies in tragic accident
after being buried under 24 tons of asphalt
TEHRAN — An elderly couple was
S o c i a l D e s k killed after being buried under 24
tons of pavement materials when a heavy truck overturned on Saturday evening, head of Hamadan´s traffic police confirmed.
Colonel Mehdi Shakeri said that the 68-year-old
driver of a Peugeot and his 55-year-old wife lost their
lives when he tried to overtake a truck carrying asphalt materials, but, faced by an incoming car from
the opposite direction, he returned to his lane dan-
gerously, IRNA reported.
“The Peugeot driver’s recklessness caused both
Peugeot and truck to veer off the lane while the
truck flipped over and crashed into the Peugeot on
the roadside,” Shakeri explained.
“The Peugeot driver’s failure to maintain an adequate distance from the truck after overtaking was
the cause of the accident,” he concluded.
The accident occurred on the Goltapeh-Kaboodrang Road.
42,500 became refugees per day in 2014: UN chief
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in his
message on World Refugee Day, 20 June 2015, said
42,500 people became refugees, asylum seekers or
internally displaced every single day in 2014.
The full text of his message reads:
On this World Refugee Day, let us remember the
plight of the millions of people worldwide who have
been forced to flee their homes as a result of conflict
and persecution. At the end of 2014, 59.5 million persons – the highest number on record – were forcibly
displaced around the globe. This means that one in
every 122 human beings today is either a refugee, internally displaced or seeking asylum.
The ongoing conflict in Syria, as well as crises in
Iraq, Ukraine, South Sudan, Central African Republic,
northeastern Nigeria and parts of Pakistan, have led
to a staggering growth and acceleration of global
forced displacement. In 2014, 42,500 people became
refugees, asylum seekers or internally displaced every single day – a rate that has quadrupled in only four
years. At the same time, many long-standing con-
flicts remained unresolved, and the number of refugees who were able to return home last year was
the lowest in over three decades. Protracted asylum
situations now last for an average of 25 years.
A growing tide of uprooted people is seeking
protection from persecution and violence. Many
of them have no choice but to try and reach safety
using dangerous means, such as has been demonstrated by the sharp increase in irregular boat
movements in the Mediterranean, Southeast Asia
and elsewhere. At times like these, it is essential
that governments and societies around the world
recommit to providing refuge and safety to those
who have lost everything to conflict or persecution. With 86 percent of all refugees living in the
developing world, and with the humanitarian response system increasingly overstretched, international solidarity and burden-sharing are crucial
in meeting the needs of displaced communities as
well as their hosts.
Refugees are people like anyone else, like you
and me. They led ordinary lives before becoming
displaced, and their biggest dream is to be able to
live normally again. On this World Refugee Day, let
us recall our common humanity, celebrate tolerance
and diversity and open our hearts to refugees everywhere.
(Source: UNIC)
Woman carrying cocaine in breast implants arrested at Colombia airport
A Honduran woman carrying 1.5 kg of
liquid cocaine in her breast implants
was arrested at the airport in Colombia’s capital Bogota on Friday, police
said.
Paola Deyanira Sabillon, 22, was
attempting to travel to Spain when
her apparent nervousness aroused
suspicion in the security line, airport
police colonel Diego Rosero told
journalists.
X-rays revealed a recent surgery
on Sabillon’s breasts and she confessed that an unknown substance
had been implanted which she was
meant to take to Barcelona, police
added.
Authorities said a preliminary investigation showed that the surgery took
place at a clandestine clinic in the city
of Pereira, in western Colombia.
The implants were removed at a
Bogota hospital where Sabillon is
also being treated for an infection.
Some 300 tons of cocaine are produced per year in Colombia, long a hub
for drug production and trafficking.
(Source: Reuters)
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
Members of the Islamic State in Iraq
and the Levant (ISIL) terrorist group
have abducted more than 1,200 children from various districts of the
northern Iraqi city of Mosul.
The Kurdistan Democratic Party
(KDP)’s spokesman in Mosul, Saeed
Mamouzini, said ISIL terrorists have
lately kidnapped 1,227 kids in multiple
neighborhoods of the city, located
some 400 kilometers (248 miles) north
of the capital, Baghdad, Iraq’s al-Sumaria satellite TV network reported.
He added that the Takfiris have
shifted the abductees to their training camps on the eastern outskirts of
Mosul, where they are being forced to
undergo training to carry out acts of
terror.
Mamouzini further said that ISIL terrorists also took into captivity scores
of Mosul residents, who had protested
against the abduction of the minors.
The report comes only days after
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said the ISIL is recruiting children
from 100 countries to commit terrorist
acts in the states, where the terrorist
group is active.
The so-called Syrian Observatory
for Human Rights said in late March
that the Takfiri ISIL terrorist group had
recruited at least 400 children in conflict-hit Syria over the first quarter of
JUNE 22, 2015
WORLD IN FOCUS
ISIL abducts over 1,200 Iraqi
kids in Mosul: Kurdish official
this year.
The children, all aged under 18,
were recruited mainly in the eastern
Syrian cities of al-Mayadin and al-Bukamal near the border with Iraq.
It further said that ISIL preyed on
the minors near schools, mosques and
in public areas, where the extremists
carry out executions, flagellation and
brutal punishments on local residents.
ISIL launched an offensive in Iraq
in June 2014, and took control of Mosul, before sweeping through parts of
the country’s heartland. The terrorists
had seized parts of neighboring Syria
before beginning their terrorist operations in Iraq.
Iraqi soldiers, police units, Kurdish
forces, and volunteer Shia and Sunni
fighters have been engaged in joint
operations to drive the terrorists out
of the areas they have seized.
Britain’s former Secretary of
State brands Iraq war ‘a mistake’
The United Kingdom shouldn’t
have gone into war in Iraq in 2003,
former Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs and one of the
closest allies of former British
Prime Minister Tony Blair through
the construct-as much as the war,
Lord Falconer, has stated.
The former Lord Chancellor stated
that the choice to hitch the war was
based mostly on the truth that they
didn’t discover any weapons of mass
destruction there. He added, “So, on
that foundation, we weren’t proper to
go in,” reported the BBC.
(Source: agencies)
Ukraine receives 55 personnel
carriers from Britain
Saudi Arabia warns against
sharing ‘faked’ cables
Britain has delivered 55 Saxon armored personnel carriers to Ukraine
despite a shaky truce in the eastern
parts of the former Soviet country.
Yuri Biryukov, an advisor to the
Ukrainian president, announced the
delivery in a message posted on his
Facebook page, the Russian Tass
news agency reported on Sunday.
“So, 55 armored personnel carriers have finally reached Ukraine. They
have been taken to the territory of
one of the military units. We are starting to adjust the vehicles to concrete
specialized tasks,” he wrote.
The cash-strapped Kiev, whose
economy has strained since the
breakout of crisis in Ukraine’s east,
is said to have paid about 51,000
pounds (USD 80,000) for each vehicle.
Back in February, Ukrainian media reported that 20 British Saxon
armored vehicles were handed in to
Kiev, with another 55 expected to arrive soon.
The Britain’s Ministry of Defense
(MoD) said at the time that the vehicles were transferred by a private
firm under a 2013 deal with the east-
Saudi Arabia has urged its citizens not
to distribute “documents that might
be faked” in an apparent response to
WikiLeaks’ publication on Friday of
more than 60,000 documents it says
are secret Saudi diplomatic communications.
The statement, made by the foreign ministry on its Twitter account
on Friday, did not directly deny the
documents’ authenticity, Reuters
news agency reported.
But on Sunday, foreign ministry
spokesperson Osama Naqli warned
the country not to “allow enemies of
the state to achieve their intentions
in regards to exchanging or publishing any documents” and said “many
of them had been fabricated in a very
obvious manner”.
Naqli said investigations were under way and that the ministry would
prosecute those involved, a statement on the Saudi news agency said.
Al Jazeera was not able to independently verify the authenticity of
the released documents.
The released documents, which
WikiLeaks said were embassy communications, emails between diplo-
ern European country.
The troop carriers were first
used by the MoD in the 1980s, but
went out of service some three
years ago, according to an MoD
spokesperson.
The development comes as Russia has repeatedly criticized plans by
Western countries to supply weapons to Ukraine, saying it would only
aggravate the situation in the country’s restive provinces.
Ukraine’s eastern regions of
Donetsk and Luhansk (Lugansk) have
witnessed deadly clashes between
pro-Moscow forces and Ukrainian
army troops since April 2014, when
Kiev launched military operations
against the pro-Russians in control of
government buildings there.
In February, Kiev and the pro-Russia forces agreed to stop fighting
across the eastern conflict zone under the terms of a ceasefire brokered
by international mediators.
The fragile truce has been frequently violated, with each side
blaming the other for breaching the
ceasefire.
(Source: Press TV)
mats and reports from other state
bodies, include discussions of Saudi
Arabia’s position regarding regional
issues and efforts to influence media.
The world’s top oil exporter, an
absolute monarchy, is highly sensitive
to public criticism and has imprisoned
activists for publishing attacks on
the ruling House of Saud and senior
clerics. It maintains tight control over
media.
Since the 2011 Arab uprisings (Islamic Awakening), Saudi authorities
have grown increasingly intolerant of
dissent, apparently fearful that the instability sweeping neighboring countries will in turn hit the conservative
Islamic kingdom.
WikiLeaks said the released documents were a batch of more than half
a million Saudi documents it has obtained and plans to publish.
WikiLeaks did not say where it obtained the documents, but it referred
in a press release to Riyadh’s statement in May that it had suffered a
breach of its computer networks, an
attack later claimed by a group calling
itself the Yemeni Cyber Army.
(Source: agencies)
ISIL militants plant mines and bombs in Palmyra
Contd. from P. 1
The agency says Sunday’s attack was carried out
by a suicide bomber who targeted a hotel in the predominantly Kurdish town, but the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human rights said the attack
took place at a base next door belonging to local
Kurdish security forces.
It was not clear if the attack was carried out by a
suicide bomber, added the observatory, which relies
on information from a network of activists across
Syria.
The agency said one person was killed and three
wounded. The observatory offered no details on casualties.
Sunday’s attack comes three weeks after a fuel
tank explosion in Qamishli killed 25 people, including
children.
(Source: agencies)
Cables released by WikiLeaks reveal Saudis’ checkbook diplomacy
Contd. from P. 1
Clear in many of the documents are
efforts by Saudi Arabia, a Sunni power,
to combat the influence of Iran, its regional rival, as well as groups like Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia group and
political party.
Cables about Iraq suggest efforts to
support politicians who opposed Nuri
Kamal al-Maliki, then the Shia prime
minister of Iraq, who was close to Iran.
One said the kingdom had given 2,000
pilgrimage visas to Mr. Maliki’s chief
rival, Ayad Allawi, to distribute as he
saw fit.
Another cable from the Saudi Embassy in Beirut relayed a request by
a Christian politician, Samir Geagea,
for cash to relieve his party’s financial
problems. The cable noted that Mr.
Geagea had stood up for the kingdom
in news media interviews, opposed
the Syrian government of President
Bashar al-Assad and had shown “his
preparedness to do whatever the kingdom asks of him.”
A spokesman for Mr. Geagea did
not respond to requests for comment
on Saturday.
“Are there just more Lebanese
begging Saudis for money or does
my timeline skew toward Lebanon?” wrote one Twitter user, Laleh
Khalili, noting the frequency of such
requests from Beirut.
Other cables show Saudi Arabia
working to maintain its regional influence. One accused Qatar, another
Persian Gulf state known for oil wealth
and cash-based diplomacy, of stirring
up trouble in Yemen, Saudi Arabia’s
southern neighbor, by backing a rich
politician to the tune of $250 million.
And a few cables implied that Saudi
leaders had negotiated with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt after the
revolution that ousted President Hosni Mubarak, a longtime Saudi ally. One
document said a leader in the Brotherhood had said the group could ensure
that Mr. Mubarak would not go to prison in exchange for $10 billion.
But a handwritten note on the document said paying “ransom” for Mr.
Mubarak was “not a good idea” because the Brotherhood could not prevent his incarceration.
The documents also indicate concerted Saudi efforts to shape news
media coverage, both inside and outside the kingdom.
One cable suggested that the government pressure an Arab satellite
provider to take an Iranian television
station off the air. In another cable, the
foreign minister suggests that the provider use “technical means to lessen
the Iranian broadcast strength.”
Other documents suggest intervention at the highest levels to shape
domestic media coverage in a way that
suits the rulers.
In an early 2012 cable marked “top
secret and urgent,” King Abdullah told
top ministers about new talks between
the kingdom and Russia over the crisis
in Syria and asked them to “direct the
media not to expose Russian personalities and to avoid offending them so as
not to harm the kingdom’s interests.”
Missing from the documents is any
evidence of direct Saudi support for
militant groups in Syria or elsewhere.
Bruce Riedel, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer now at the
Brookings Institution, said that while
considerable evidence of such programs exists, they are handled by the
kingdom’s intelligence services, and
the foreign ministry is often “not in
the loop.”
“That allows the Saudis to have
plausible deniability and to liaison with
other intelligence services aiding the
rebels,” he said.
Some found the documents underwhelming, noting that similar activities
are carried out by many countries, including the United States.
“There is not really something shocking that compromises Saudi security,”
said Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, a political science professor in the United Arab Emirates, who had read about 100 cables.
Everyone knows that Saudi Arabia
practices checkbook diplomacy, he
said, adding that it now had to compete for clients with other rich states,
like Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab
Emirates.
One surprise in the documents, he
said, is that the former Saudi foreign
minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, had to
seek the permission of the king before
proceeding with even minor matters.
“It seems that the king is the king in
Saudi Arabia, no matter how princely
you are,” Dr. Abdulla said.
Other surprising finds showed up in
the WikiLeaks’ net.
The Lebanese singer Nancy Ajram,
received a visa and visited a Saudi
prince inside the kingdom despite instructions that all visas for artists and
singers be preapproved by the Interior
Ministry, according to the documents.
The foreign ministry branch in Mecca responded that Ms. Ajram had received the visa to travel with her husband and had come on a personal visit,
not in her capacity as an artist.
Also in the cache was an email
to a foreign ministry official from a
technology company called StarLink,
whose website says it is a “trusted security adviser.”
Reached by phone, the company’s business development manager,
Mahmoud Odeh, confirmed that StarLink had provided computer security
services to the Saudi government.
When asked what he thought of the
leaks, Mr. Odeh hung up.
(Source: The New york Times)
I N T E R NAT I O NALDAI LY
11
JUMP
Dylann Roof and the white
fear of a black takeover
Contd. from P. 6
Fear of blacks
The fear of blacks taking over worldwide also fueled
American segregationists’ interest in southern Africa,
where white-minority regimes in South Africa and Rhodesia teetered on the brink of collapse. Even as the international community shunned these pariah states, the
segregationist Citizens’ Councils, which peaked at 40,000
members in South Carolina, claimed them as kindred spirits, while depicting African anti-colonialists and African
American civil rights activists alike as spear-chucking savages and enemies of Western civilization.
Whatever he thinks he knows about southern Africa
— he was born after white rule ended in both Rhodesia
and South Africa — Roof is not the first white Southerner
to feel connected to it.
Whether he knows it or not, Dylann Roof inherited a logic and a political legacy that defied statistics, the march of
time, and any shred of common humanity. Generations of
white supremacists stoked the fear that African Americans,
whether a numerical majority or not, could take over a divided, apathetic, and unsuspecting white nation.
The obsession with black domination rendered African
Americans simultaneously sub- and superhuman, unable
to contribute to American society yet capable of destroying it. The domination myth proved just as contradictory
for white supremacists, who simultaneously reveled in
their superiority and lamented their political impotence
at the hands of minority tyranny.
For those who persist in this phobia, the mere sight of
black people engaging in American civic life — whether
peaceful protestors and voters, a South Carolina state
senator or the president of the United States — can be
too much to take.
Indeed, for decades, the central lesson of white supremacy was that any black engagement in public life
could and would ultimately destroy the nation. As a native white Southerner, I had heard echoes of these fears
straight from people’s mouths long before I encountered
them in the archives.
Thank God, not everyone who still believes that African Americans are “taking over” is homicidal. Even if
they are drawing their history from the same poisoned
well as Dylann Roof.
(Source: The Los Angeles Times)
Napoleon Bonaparte,
French emperor
Contd. from P. 7
Nationalism of course has the potential to be every bit
as dangerous as bureaucratic despotism when it turns
tribal, narrow and xenophobic.
But there has to be some sort of breathing space for
national sentiment within the cage of capitalist management which is all that institutional Europe has become.
Appeals to this other Europe, the one of a family of nations — sometimes harmonious, often discordant —
would have left Napoleon cold. He would have greeted
someone else’s financial problem and the spectacle of
immigrant boat people with a shrug of the shoulders. But
then there was something inhuman about his brilliance,
expended as it ultimately was entirely on himself.
Perhaps Chateaubriand put it most humanely when,
despising the romance of the despot, he lamented that
“gone are the sufferers, and the victims’ curses, their
cries of pain”. Which is why it is right to raise a cheer and
a glass 200 years on from Waterloo.
(Source: Financial Times)
Afghan troops retake
northeastern district from
Taliban
Afghan forces have regained control of a district in the
northeastern province of Badakhshan from Taliban militants following intense clashes with the militants there,
Press TV reports.
Colonel Sakhi Dad Haidari, a deputy provincial police
chief, said Afghan troopers wrested control of the Yamgan district, which lies roughly 300 kilometers (186 miles)
northeast of the capital, Kabul, at around 7 a.m. local
time (0230 GMT) on Sunday.
He did not provide any information about the exact
number of possible casualties as a result of the fighting,
only saying that several top Taliban commanders were
among the slain militants.
However, Badakhshan provincial governor Shah Waliullah Adeeb said 40 Taliban terrorists were killed in the
fierce battles and many sustained injuries. He further said
that three Afghan soldiers also lost their lives.
The Taliban had taken control of Yamgan district on June
6 after intense fighting with Afghan government forces.
The development comes less than a day after Taliban
seized control of the Chardara district in Afghanistan’s
northeastern province of Kunduz following an hourslong exchange of fire with Afghan security forces.
Meanwhile, the Afghan Defense Ministry said in a
statement on Sunday that 26 militants were killed and
tens of others injured in a series of operations carried out
in the provinces of Farah, Helmand and Logar over the
past 24 hours.
The statement added that seven Afghan soldiers were
also killed during the offensives. Afghan soldiers also confiscated light and heavy weapons, defusing 17 improvised
explosive devices (IEDs) as well.
(Source: Press TV)
b
Poem of the day
I N T E R N AT I O N A L D A I L Y
It is best to a worshipper for his transgressions
To offer apologies at the throne of God.
http://www.tehrantimes.com/culture
SINCE 1979
Sadi
No. 18, Bimeh Lane, Nejatollahi St., Tehran, Iran
P.o. Box: 14155-4843
Zip Code: 1599814713
NEWS IN BRIEF
Excerpt
of ancient
Japanese poetry
published in
Persian
An
excerpt
from
“Manyoshu”, one of the
oldest existing collections
of Japanese poetry, has
recently been released in
Persian by Jahan-e Ketab
Publications.
“Manyoshu”
which
literally means “Collection
of Ten Thousand Leaves”,
dates back to the Nara
period
(710-794).
The
compiler is widely believed
to be Otomo no Yakamochi,
although several other
hypotheses have been
proposed.
The selection of verses
has been rendered into
Persian
by
Hashem
Rajabzadeh with the help
of Japanese writer Yoko
Fujimoto.
“The
Ringmaster’s
Daughter”
hits Iranian
bookstores
Norwegian
author
Jostein Gaarder’s bestseller
“The
Ringmaster’s
Daughter”
has
been
published in Persian.
The novel uses a
frequent Gaarder device
of telling a story within
a story. It is narrated by
Petter, a Norwegian man
who recounts his life since
childhood.
Rendered into Persian by
Shaqayeq Qandehari, the
book has been released by
Qoqnus Publications.
“My Mother’s
Blue Sky” to
compete in
Italian festival
Iranian filmmaker Ali
Ghavitan’s “My Mother’s
Blue Sky” will go on screen at
the 45th Giffoni International
Film Festival, which will be
held in the southern Italian
city of Giffoni Valle Piana
from July 17 to 26.
Set in a barren plain
surrounded by rugged
mountains
in
Semnan
Province, the movie tells the
story of Sara and her son
Amir who try to safeguard
their own coal mine.
This year, the Giffoni
festival, which is one of the
largest children film events
in Europe, has received over
4000 submissions from 52
countries around the world.
40 photos
selected for
Intl. Holy Quran
Exhibition
Forty photos on the
theme of religious events
have been selected to
showcase with many other
Quranic artworks at the
23nd International Holy
Quran Exhibition, which will
be held at Tehran’s Sacred
Defense Garden Museum
from June 24 to July 17.
The
photos
were
selected by a committee
composed
of
Hassan
Ghaffari, Masud Zenderuh,
Jasem Ghazbanpur, and
Afshin Shahrudi.
Winners
of
the
photo exhibition will be
announced on July 12.
Tehran exhibit
to showcase
Quranic works
of master
calligraphers
Works by a number of
master calligraphers on the
theme of the Holy Quran
will be on display in an
exhibition at Tehran’s Saba
Art and Cultural Institute
from June 23 to July 22.
Works in various styles
of Persian and Arabic
calligraphy,
including
nastaliq, thulth, and naskh,
by Iranian artists GholamHossein Amirkhani, AmirAhmad Falsafi, Ali Shirazi,
Mohammad
Salahshur,
Ali-Ashraf
Sandoqabadi,
Mohammad-Ali Sabzekar
and Rasul Moradi have
been selected for the
exhibition.
The Saba Art and
Cultural Institute is located
on Mozaffar St., Taleqani
Ave, near Felestin Square.
Managing Director: Ali Asgari
Editor-in-Chief: Hassan Lasjerdi
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Prayer Times
Noon:13:06
Printed at: Kayhan - ISSN: 1017-94
Evening: 20:45
Dawn: 4:02 (tomorrow)
Sunrise: 5:49 (tomorrow)
Egyptian reciters invited to Iranian
Quran sessions during Ramadan
TEHRAN
—
number of
famous reciters from Egypt have
been invited to perform at the
Quran reciting sessions scheduled
to be held in Tehran during the holy
month of Ramadan.
Adil al-Baz, Mahmood Shahat
Muhammad Anwar, Ahmed Shahat
Lasheen, Abdul Wahhab Tantawi,
Mahmood Ali Shamis, Juma Raza
Mansoor, Abdulnasir Harak and
Yusuf Al Azhari are among the
reciters.
The Quran reciting sessions are
part of a vast program organized by
Iran’s State Endowment and Charity
Affairs Organization (ECAO) for
Ramadan, ECAO’s Quranic Affairs
Department Director Hojjatoleslam
Mostafa Hosseini said in a press
release on Sunday.
Hosseini said that some Iranian
Quran reciters will also be attending
the sessions.
Culture D e s k A
From left to right, Egyptian Quran reciters Adil al-Baz, Ahmed Shahat Lasheen, Mahmood Shahat Muhammad Anwar, and Abdul Wahhab
Tantawi are seen in a combination photo.
A large number of meetings,
exhibitions and competitions on
the theme of Quran have also been
arranged for this holy month, he
Pakistani academic visits
Sadi Foundation
TEHRAN — The
of the
Persian Department at the Lahore
College for Women University,
Syeda Faleeha Zahra Kazmi, has
paid a visit to the Sadi Foundation,
a Tehran-based institute that
promotes the Persian language
abroad.
Kazmi also met the director
of the foundation, Gholam-Ali
Haddad-Adel, and discussed ways
to expand cultural relations, the
foundation announced in a press
release on Sunday.
“The foundation is ready to
address any need for Persian
Culture D e s k head
language courses in Pakistan,”
Haddad-Adel said at the meeting.
Kazmi
expressed
her
satisfaction over the close
cooperation with the foundation
and added that the Persian
Department
has
recently
launched a Ph.D. program in
Persian language.
They also reviewed the
commemoration conference on
Allama Iqbal Lahori (1877-1938),
which was held in Tehran and
Isfahan last week.
The Persian Department was
established in 1922 when Lahore
College for Women was founded.
PICTURE OF THE DAY
added.
These sessions are due to be
held in different locations such
as mosques, holy sites and some
religious organizations, he stated.
The ECAO plans to dispatch
experts and Quran reciters to these
gatherings.
Tehran gallery to display
calligraphic works on Imam Ali (AS)
TEHRAN — An
of
calligraphic-paintings on Imam
Ali (AS), the first Imam of the
Shia, will open at Tehran’s Hepta
Gallery on Friday.
A collection of 20 artworks
created by Soheila Ahmadi,
Sepideh Ashrafi, Reza Taqipur,
Shayan Peimani, Shadi Talaii,
Hamid Tolueifard, and eight
other artists will go on display
at the exhibit entitled “Endless
Sea”, curator Mohammadreza
Javadinasab told the Persian
service of ISNA on Sunday.
“The young artists have
Art
D e s k exhibition
By Majid Haqdust/Mehr
A retailer (R) packs a mixture of zulbia, bamieh and gushfil, varieties of confections sold during the holy month of Ramadan
in Iranian stores, for customers in Tehran on June 20, 2015.
selected a variety of their works
created in their own new and
specific styles of calligraphicpaintings”, he added.
“The works are for sale,
however the artists mostly aim to
transfer their inner feelings about
their first Imam through their
artworks,” he said.
He noted that the exhibit has
been arranged by the newlyestablished gallery to support the
novices.
The exhibit will be running until
July 5 at the gallery located at 30
Razeqi Shemirani Alley, Ekhtiarieh
St.
Jolie decries 'explosion
of suffering' after visiting
refugees in Turkey
MIDYAT, TURKEY (Reuters) —
Hollywood actress and director
Angelina Jolie on Saturday described
a spiraling global refugee crisis as
an “explosion of human suffering”
whose causes the international
community refuses to confront.
Jolie, who serves as a United
Nations special envoy for refugees,
was speaking at a news conference
in southeastern Turkey, home to
Syrians and Iraqis displaced by war,
on World Refugee Day.
The U.N. refugee agency UNHCR
said in a report last week that there
were now more refugees than at
any other time in history, with 59.5
million people displaced from their
homes worldwide.
“There is an explosion of human
suffering and displacement on
a level that has never been seen
before,” Jolie said, warning that
Syrians and Iraqis were running
out of safe havens as neighboring
states reached the limit of their
capacity.
“It is hard to point to a single
instance where, as an international
community, we are decisively
addressing the root causes of
refugee flows,” she said.
Adel Bozdudeh preparing puppetry with social educational hints
—
Adel
Bozdudeh is currently preparing
a puppet play, in which he plans
to teach children some important
socials lessons.
“Concepts like consultation
and participation will implicitly
be promoted in the puppet show
tentatively entitled “Honey Pot Has
Disappeared”, he told the Persian
service of Honaronline on Sunday.
“This play tells a comic story
Art
TEHRAN
D e s k Director
about a group of animals that are
living together in a forest,” he
stated.
“A member of the group
relocates the provisions of the
forest animals. However, they
find the provisions and punish the
perpetrator,” he added.
The puppet show is scheduled
to be performed at the Institute
for the Intellectual Development of
Children and Young Adults during
September and October.
“Our target audience is children
above 7, but due to the fact that
the play will be staged with simple
social concepts, it not be obscure
for children under that age,” said
Bozdudeh, who has so far directed
dozens of puppet shows for screen
and stage.
He has also collaborated as
puppet maker and puppeteer
in
many
shows
including
“Grandmother’s Home”, director
Marzieh Borumand’s popular series
Adel Bozdudeh in an undated photo
that was broadcast on Iranian TV in
the late 1980s.