Education Minister Morteza Haji said that illiteracy among adults under 30 years of age would be eliminated by the end of the fourth five-year development plan (2005-2010), the Communications and Information Dissemination Office of the Literacy Movement Organization reported.
According to IRNA, Haji, who was paying a visit to a literacy center in Yaftabad, Tehran, on the occasion of “Education for All Week“, added that the literacy rate would improve to 92 percent in the course of the fourth development plan and the comprehensive plan to uproot illiteracy.
Presently over eight million Iranians are unable to read and write, the minister noted, predicting that the illiteracy rate would be halved by 2010.
About 2,000 training centers run by Literacy Movement Organization offer courses to adults, he stated, adding the government plans to improve the centers as far as their numbers and the quality of their services are concerned.
Haji further mentioned that local training centers, as stipulated by the Third Five-Year Economic, Social and Cultural Development Plan (2000-2005), were formed with an aim to help eradicate poverty and improve quality of education among residents of deprived villages and shanty towns.
The minister explained that the local centers, besides rendering courses to improve reading, writing and calculating skills, offer training on how to help family economy, improve individual hygiene and eradicate diseases.
International Week of Education for All began on April 24 and will last through April 30.

Abolhassan Saba was born in Tehran in 1902. Showing a keen interest in music at an early age, he found his way into the world of melody and harmony since he was very young.
His father, Kamal-ul-Saltaneh was a cultured man who had a fondness for and knowledge of music. Saba’s father wanted his sons to become familiar with different musical instruments. Abolhassan learned the rudiments of music under a lady named Robabeh. Saba’s father taught him how to play the Setar (a traditional Iranian string instrument). Later he went to maestro Mirza Abdollah for completion of his skills.
Saba also took music lessons from renowned musicians such as Alinaqi Vaziri, Gholamhossein Darvish Khan, Nayeb Asadollah, Hossein Khan Hankafarin and Hossein Khan Esmailzadeh.
Experts believe Iran has seen very few noble musicians as Saba in the present century. He is believed by most musicians to be the Father of Iranian music.
Saba was not only a skilled player of Setar and violin, but he also had a highly personalized style. The master trained a large number of talented players.
Extensive research in the field of music is among other efforts of maestro Saba. He studied the history of Iranian music for nearly two decades.
He also closely collaborated with Iranian Music Association.
Saba believed that Iranian music characterizes the emotions and spirit of Iranian people. He viewed music as a science which should act as the cornerstone of any composition or piece. He was against distasteful imitation in music.
Some of the late master’s works include ’Camel’s Bell’, ’Bahar Mast’ (Intoxicated With Spring), ’To Prison’, ’Yellow Sparrow’, ’In Memory of the Past’, ’In Cage’, ’Ghasemabadi Wood Dance’, ’Mountainous’ and many more.
Some of his students are renowned composers and players including Ali Tajvidi, Habibollah Badiee, Rahmatollah Badiee, Parviz Yahaqqi, Assadollah Malek, Faramarz Payvar, Hossein Dehlavi, Hossein Tehrani, Majid Vafadar and Mehdi Khaledi.
Saba passed away in 1957 as a result of heart problems.

The festival aims to give an insight of Kashan rose and rosewater industry to investors.

Kashan’s Fifth Rose and Rosewater Festival will be held simultaneously in Tehran, Isfahan and Kashan (Qamsar, Niasar, Joshaqan and Kamou cities) during May 15-29, governor of Kashan reported.
Hossein Sistani stated that the event would be inaugurated in Tehran at Eshraq Cultural Center on May 15 concurrent with the International Family Day as well as the National Day to Commemorate Ferdosi, ISNA said.
He added that Isfahan Cultural Heritage and Tourism Department, with the cooperation of Kashan Municipality, would celebrate the event in Chehelsotoun Garden on May 17 marking the World Museum Day.
Sistani, who also heads Kashan Tourism Promotion Taskforce, added the event would wind up in Kamou and Joshaqan, towns near Kashan, on May 29.
Meanwhile, secretary of the festival, Mohammad Gozarnoei, named the most important programs of the event as poetry recitals about flowers and nature by renowned artists as well as commemoration of war veterans.
A number of conferences are scheduled on the sidelines of the festival revolving around topics such as development of tourism industry, qualitative improvement of rosewater and its essence, promotion of flower farming and species, and exploitation of untapped regional potentials. The conferences will be attended by prominent experts in tourism services as well as directors of industrial rosewater extraction units.
Head of Marketing and Information Dissemination Committee of the festival, Hossein Digbari, expanded on plans to accommodate guests and sightseers during the 12-day event.
He added that the festival aims to give an insight of Kashan rose and rosewater industry to investors, publicize the sector, help employ cutting-edge technological and scientific know-how in the plantation and harvest of roses, and bring prosperity for Kashan tourism industry.
Kashan is globally famous for its quality rosewater which is extracted from the sweet-scented Mohammadi Rose, indigenous to Iran.

Thanks to the endeavors of the Cultural Department of the Islamic Republic Embassy to Thailand, the Association of Persian Language and Literature Supporters was established in Bangkok, ILNA reported.
The Public Relations Office of the Islamic Culture and Communications Organization said that during the association’s first session attended by professors and students of different nationalities, the necessity of arranging get-togethers for admirers of Persian language and literature was underscored.
They also exchanged views on teaching Persian language in Thailand’s academic centers, universities and schools as well as promoting Persian to Thai language translation.
Directors of Silpakorn University, one of Thailand’s top higher education institutions, expressed their readiness to help offer Persian language courses in different colleges.

A congress to commemorate Iranian top painter and founder of Tabriz School of Art, Soltan Mohammad Tabrizi, is slated for May 9 in Tabriz, director of East Azarbaijan Governor General Office for social affairs said.
The congress will be held with an aim to introduce and promote Tabriz School on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Constitutional Revolution in Iran.
According to Rahimi, Nezameddin Soltan Mohammad Tabrizi, the vanguard of Tabriz miniature, lived during the 15th and 16th century. He invented a new style of painting during the Safavid era by combining Harat and Turkaman styles.
His valuable works include the Shahnameh of Shah Tahmaseb, Divan of Hafez, Sam Mirza and Nezami Ganjavi’s Khamseh.
The premises of Do-Kamal mausoleum, his burial place, will be completely ready by May 9 when the congress is due.

Remnants of Toozandeh Jan Fort in Neishabour, Khorasan province. The historic monument dates back to the Sassanid era (226-642 AD). (IRNA Photo)

Egyptian and American archeologists have found a sprawling necropolis in southern Egypt thought to be more than 5,000 years old and containing evidence of an early form of mummification, Egypt’s antiquities chief said, AFP reported.
The funerary site, predating Pharaonic rule, was discovered by a team of Egyptian and US archeologists in the southern Kom al-Ahmar region, between Luxor and Aswan, Zahi Hawass said in a statement.
The remains of seven people were discovered inside the necropolis, four of whom are believed to have been buried alive as human sacrifices, he said.
A flint statuette of a cow’s head was also found on the site. In 2000, fragments of a limestone statue thought to be the oldest life-size human depiction in Egypt were discovered in the same area.
Hawass said the complex, the largest ever discovered from that period, should yield significant information on pre-Pharaonic Egypt.
The site is thought to have belonged to a ruler of the ancient Nile city of Hierakonpolis--the city of the falcon--which was the dominant pre-dynastic urban center and the capital of the kingdom of Upper Egypt.

A view of Niujie Mosque in Beijing

Repair work on a 1,000-year-old mosque in the heart of the Muslim-dominated Niujie area of Beijing started last week, chinaview.cn reported.
Built in 996 during the Liao Dynasty (907-1125), Niujie Mosque is the oldest and largest Islamic place of worship in Beijing.
The renovation project, with an investment of nearly 20 million yuan ($2.4 million), includes repairs not only on the current 5,000-square-meter mosque, but also on two nearby buildings.
These were originally part of the mosque, but were later occupied by other work units.
The organizations that took over the two buildings, including a primary school and several other institutions and businesses, have found new homes and have moved out.
The two buildings, covering more than 4,000 square meters, will be given back to the mosque after renovation work that is scheduled to be completed by the end of this year, according to Yu Ping, vice director of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Cultural Heritage.
Yu said one of the buildings would resume its original function as a site for female Muslims. The second building might be turned into the office of the Islam Association of Xuanwu District.
Wei Chunjie, deputy head of the administrative office of the mosque, said the renovation work would not only include repairs to ancient buildings, such as the prayer hall and the Watching Moon Tower, but also cover water, electricity and heating supply systems.
Wei said since the mosque could not be used for religious services during the renovation period, the district’s Islam association has chosen a building 200 meters away as a temporary place.
Islam was introduced into China during n the Tang Dynasty (618-907).
At present, there are about 250,000 Muslims in Beijing, according to official statistics. The Niujie quarter houses the largest number of Muslims in the capital. The Niujie Mosque has undergone three renovations since 1949--in 1955, 1979 and 1996.

The last night’s rain had made the foggy mountainous road so fresh, so joyful. The car rounded a curve in the roadway and stopped at the villa’s front gate. The woman got out, filled up her lungs with the clean mountain air, and stared at the vast green expanse of land in front of her eyes with fervor and wistfulness. How she wished for the beautiful nature to wash away all her concerns! How she yearned for that simple rustic life!
Seeing the woman, the young village girl paused, fixing her eyes upon her movements. For a single moment, she forgot all about her work, the farm, the sheep.
Their eyes met and a thought crossed the mind of each woman, “I wish I were herÉ“

UK’s oldest rock art, at Creswell Crags in the midlands, has been dated to more than 12,800 years ago, BBC reported.
A team from Bristol, Sheffield and Open Universities got the date by measuring traces of radioactive uranium in limestone crusts over the engravings.
More than 80 pictures have now been discovered in the caves on the Nottinghamshire-Derbyshire border.
The research is to be published in the Journal of Archaeological Science.
The complex of caves at Creswell Crags has preserved evidence of human activity during the last Ice Age.
Archeologists announced the discovery of the engravings, on the walls and ceilings of the caves, in 2003.
The pictures depict animals such as the European bison, which is now extinct from Britain, and other figures.

Doomsayers’ predictions that enlargement of the European Union would spell a collapse into a cacophonous chaos in 20 languages have been confounded by the bloc’s army of translators, AFP reported.
While there have been linguistic glitches over the year following its “big bang“ expansion last year, overall most people agree the European Union’s polyglot expansion has gone off relatively smoothly.
EU expansion to 25 member states saw the number of official languages nearly double to 20, from the 11 shared by old EU states. Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish were suddenly joined by Czech, Estonian, Hungarian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Slovak and Slovene.
With an army of 1,650 linguists and 550 support staff, the EU’s translation service is already the biggest in the world. And it had been gearing up for years for last year’s language explosion.
Nevertheless, not everything went smoothly all the time over the last 12 months.
At one point the EU commission made a formal request to all bureaucrats--not known for their linguistic succinctness even at the best of times--to keep their output short, to ease the pressure on translators.
Another time the EU executive admitted that it had not yet provided full official translations of the EU’s controversial new constitution into all languages, raising questions over its legal validity.
The translation service’s spokeswoman, Tytti Granqvist, said, “We have been able to prioritize and focus the translating on those texts that are really important for their legal and political importance.“
Granqvist said that the arrival of the EU newcomers had neither halted nor hastened a long-term trend of original documents being increasingly prepared in English at the expense of French.
“Five years ago the trend was that French was dominating, now it has happened that English is more and more the language of the originals,“ she said.