More than 218,000 low-income married youth are presently in need of housing.

Head of the National Youth Organization (NYO) said 100,000 small-size residential units specially designed for young couples would be ready by the end of the fourth plan (2005-2010) with the help of charitable individuals.
Speaking at the first National Assembly of Benefactors of Housing Construction Projects for Youth, Rahim Ebadi pointed to an annual 670,000 marriages in the country, recalling that about 428,000 marriages involving the 20-29 age group were registered in the year to March 2005.
He said more than 218,000 low-income married youth are presently in need of housing, adding the number is on the rise due to growth in population.
The official said apart from addiction, young people are also caught up in moral conflicts most of which pertain to illicit relationships between boys and girls. “Our society is committed to observance of Islamic principles. However, the delay in the average age of marriage has created additional problems for young people,“ he commented.
Referring to employment and housing as two other major challenges, Ebadi said, “The NYO presented the National Document on Housing for Youth last year in line with its duties stipulated in the Fourth Plan. The proposal was endorsed by the High Youth Council,“ he said, adding the executive bylaw on the proposal will be submitted to the cabinet in May with the cooperation of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development.
He referred to the establishment of a savings fund to meet young people’s housing requirements with the cooperation of 450,000 youth, hoping the fund would be supported by the government, Maskan (Housing) Bank as well as benefactors.
Iran ranks first in the world in terms of its 15-19 year old population and is the second youngest country in terms of its 15-29 age group, Ebadi said.

First Festival of University Students’ Commercial Plans will be held on May 14-15 in Tehran with the theme ’Students, Employment and Development’, secretary of the festival said.
Davoud Hassanpour told Fars news agency that the festival aims to keep students in touch with industries, commercialize their ideas and increase their cooperation with industrialists.
He revealed that a committee had been set up to negotiate with concerned ministries and state-run institutions to persuade them to launch places that would act as incubators of new ideas.
“This would help guide students who have new commercial ideas by providing them with knowledge and technical assistance,“ he mentioned.
The festival also prepares the grounds for direct negotiations with investors as well as private and state-owned banks.
Hassanpour named establishment of a committee to follow up registration of the first union of student cooperatives as another target of the event.
Over 5,000 one-page abstracts of commercial plans developed by students throughout the country would be judged at the festival, he said, adding, a databank of the students’ commercial ideas would be launched by the festival’s secretariat.
Hassanpour invited interested parties to submit their proposals to the secretariat at P.O. Box 13185-119 not later than May 10.

The “Healthy Youth 2020“ plan put forth by a student of Mashhad Medical Sciences University and endorsed by the International Youth Parliament managed to win the approval of United Nations Programme on Youth.
The proposal was earlier put forth by Vahid Nobahar, Iran’s representative to IYP in Australia.
“Healthy Youth 2020“ proposes a shift in the way the health sector has traditionally seen young people: from being a problem to be solved to being active participants in creating a healthier world.
As well as identifying the risks to mental and physical health where young people’s lifestyles make them particularly vulnerable, the action plan proposes ways of making health services more youth-focused in order to provide high-quality, youth-friendly, accessible health services for all young people regardless of any disabilities.
Psychological and emotional health, physical health, cultural and spiritual health, and healthy relationship with family members are four major principles of the proposal.
The proposal was devised with the cooperation of Khorasan Health Center and has won the kudos of several domestic and international organizations.

Vice director of the Education Ministry’s Office for Health and Nutrition warned against an increase in the number of overweight students, SYNA wrote.
Molouk Mottaqian said no precise figures were yet available on the number of overweight schoolchildren, but noted, “Expert assessments have revealed that the phenomenon is on the rise at the elementary level.“
She attributed the problem to unhealthy diets, physical inactivity, and too much time spent on playing computer games and watching TV.
She insisted that stoutness was not a good sign for childhood health, adding the child’s height and weight should grow in tandem.
“Overeating cheese snacks and potato chips is linked to obesity in children--not to mention that the habit can induce anemia as well,“ Mottaqian commented.
The official expressed hope that with the expansion of healthy buffets in schools nationwide, children would get used to nourishing dietary practices and learn to stay away from junk food.

Two young shepherds in Ardebil. (Photo by Oshin D. Zakarian)

Head of the Pupils Organization said that close to 1,000 school students will travel to Mecca weekly during the summer holidays, ILNA reported.
Shah-Hosseini added that the scheme was only intended for high school students.
He noted that an overall 10,000 high schoolers who had registered for Hajj pilgrimage since March 21 countrywide, would travel to Mecca. “Presently, they are learning the Hajj rituals,“ he added.
Shah-Hosseini remarked that the number of students registered for the pilgrimage is the same as that of last year’s, “for we believe that an increase in number would decrease the quality of programs and services provided.“

Children with total or partial loss of sight and hearing, cognitive disability, mobility impairment and behavioral disorder must go through preschool education.

All exceptional students are obliged to attend preschool, deputy education minister for elementary and secondary schooling said.
Mokhtar Mousavi told IRNA that children with total or partial loss of sight and hearing, cognitive disability, mobility impairment and behavioral disorder must go through preschool education.
As per the National Document on Education for All, preschool education would be optional for other children.
“Based on last year’s approval of the High Education Council, the preschool period was extended to two years to cover four- and five-year-old kids,“ he mentioned.
Mousavi explained that preschool education has been designed with an aim to promote mental and physical ability of children and to help them achieve social and emotional growth.
“Inculcating the right individual and social behavioral patterns among children and boosting a desire for teamwork in them are other goals of preschool education,“ he added.
The official went on to say that preschool institutes are supervised by various organizations including ministries of education and labor, municipalities, State Welfare Organization as well as non-governmental institutions.
The educational activities of preschools, he noted, include field trips, experiment and observation, group discussions, poems, storytelling and artistic creations.
Mousavi said that the hours of attending preschool will vary depending on the desire of families and the conditions of educational institutes.

Chinese kindergarten children hide under their beds during an intruder drill at a nursery in Beijing. (AFP File Photo)

Beijing will equip all its boarding kindergartens, primary and middle schools with video cameras linked to police departments to prevent attacks on children, state media reported.
The move follows a string of on-campus violence committed against children in the past year, including schoolyard stabbings.
The monitors will be installed over major entrances and exits, walls, hallways, financial offices and computer classrooms, according to a plan issued by the municipal education and police departments, the Beijing News reported.
The new system can deliver warnings immediately if an incident takes place, the report said.
It also allows for long-distance image transmission so that the police can “watch the situation on the spot through the network,“ the report quoted an official with the police bureau in Beijing’s Haidian district as saying.
The government has paid greater attention to school security after a series of knife attacks last year in schools and daycare centers.
In April 2004, Xu Heping, a guard at a Beijing kindergarten, stabbed one child to death and wounded 14 children and three teachers. Xu was later found to have a history of schizophrenia.
In October, a five-year-old boy and his teacher were killed at a Beijing kindergarten by a would-be thief. The boy’s body was found stuffed in a washing machine.
Similar deadly attacks occurred elsewhere in the country.
Following the incidents, Chinese authorities ordered a nationwide inspection of schools, requiring they carry out an overhaul of security and dismiss staff who are not qualified to work with children.

Infant mortality rose in Romania in 2004 to 16.8 deaths per live 1,000 births, the highest rate in Europe, Alin Stanescu, director of the national Institute for Mothers told AFP.
He said this rate was “the highest in Europe due to poor health systems in Romania.“
Last year the rate in Romania was 16.7 per 1,000.
Still, Stanescu said that despite the 2004 figure, a total of 220,000 babies were born in Romania in 2004, a million more than in 2003.
For the first time since the fall of the communist regime in 1989, the number of births last year was higher than the number of abortions.
Romania is also among the countries with the highest rates of women dying in childbirth, with 26 fatalities in 2004 after abortions carried out by rudimentary means. Parliament passed a law in September 2004 guaranteeing women the right to be informed about abortions and their risks.
“We hope this law will lead to fewer abortions by giving women easier access to health services,“ Stanescu said.
In 1990, after the fall of the pro-birth regime of communist Nicolae Ceausescu, who had banned all forms of contraception, Romania had 866,934 abortions but only 275,275 births.

The number of children at work in Morocco is falling but the kingdom must do more to address the problem affecting 600,000 children, Reuters quoted an official report as saying.
“Child labor is declining in Morocco,“ said a joint report by the government, UNICEF and the International Labor Organization released at a seminar on child labor.
The number of children at work fell 4 percent from 1991 to 2001, the report said, because of efforts by the government to increase schooling opportunities for them.
The vast majority of children work in the agricultural sector, but also in the textile industry making carpets.
Morocco is ranked 125th in the latest UN human development index based on education and public health and life expectancy.
The North African country’s social indicators, such as illiteracy, are far worse in rural areas where a little less than half of the country’s 30 million people live.
Fighting child labor will require efforts from local aid groups and parents, and not only the government, said Labor and Professional Training Minister Mustapha Mansouri.
“This is a major challenge for the Moroccan government. We have to get drinking water, electricity, schools and hospitals in our rural areas,“ Mansouri told Reuters on the sidelines of the seminar in the capital Rabat.
In 1999, the government launched a strategy to reduce child labor by raising the minimum schooling age, he said.
According to the report, 84 percent of working children are based in rural areas. More than half have never been to school and neither have their parents.
Some of the children work up to 61 hours a week in dangerous conditions, with a survey of 3,500 working children showing only 3 percent of them work in a safe environment, the report said.
Girls represent the majority of children at work, especially as housemaids in cities.
A study earlier this year revealed that 36 percent of women who were raped in Morocco last year worked as maids.