Reconstruction work is still underway in Bam City which devastated by a major earthquake in 2003.

Asia Pacific Seismic Risk Reduction Collaboration Center will be launched in Iran, said an official with Natural Disasters Research Institute. Farshid Tofiqi, deputy head of Executive Secretariat for Enforcement of World Conference on Disaster Reduction, Kobe, Hyogo prefecture of Japan, told Iran Daily’s Monavar Khalaj that the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction has endorsed establishment of the center in Iran.
“Preliminary arrangements needed at the international level have been made and the executive operations are underway,“ he said.
The official stated that the center will serve as a venue to enhance regional capacities in the field of seismic risk reduction and vulnerability assessment.
According to him, it also facilitates exchange of information, knowledge and expertise on seismic risk reduction among governments and institutions of the region and helps promote public awareness.
Other objectives of the center include promotion of regional and interregional networking and partnership on disaster risk reduction as well as assisting regional governments with the implementation of Hyogo framework for action, Tofiqi noted.
Meanwhile, ISNA quoted head of Natural Disasters Research Institute as saying that the country is the first in the Asia-Pacific region which will play host to such center.
Seyyed Mahmoud Fatemi Aqda stated that the center is the focal point in the UN system to promote links and synergies between, and the coordination of, disaster reduction activities in the socioeconomic, humanitarian and development fields, as well as to support policy integration.
He underlined that Iran is among the 10 countries most vulnerable to natural disasters. Each year, natural calamities inflict huge human and financial losses on the country.

Employers are given a 2-week deadline to introduce their Afghan workers to the authorities.

More than 96.3 billion rials in fines were imposed on employers violating the law banning employment of illegal foreign immigrants, mostly Afghans, during March-Dec. 2006, of which only 1.3 billion rials has been disbursed so far, according to an ISNA report.
During the same period, 473 employers were introduced to judiciary authorities for breaching the law and 4,522 fines were issued.
The same report added that more than 150,000 unauthorized immigrant workers were identified in workshops across Tehran province.
The plan to fine employers and expel Afghan workers in high density provinces was launched in early November 2006. It is reported that 100,000 illegal foreign workers have been expelled and replaced with Iranians ever since.
Employers are given a 15-day deadline to introduce their Afghan workers to the authorities from the day their infringement is reported by inspectors of the Bureau for Aliens and Foreign Immigrants Affairs.

Chairman of Iran AIDS Association estimated the number of HIV-positive individuals unaware of their disease at ranging between 60,000 and 100,000, insisting that the public must be educated on ways of preventing AIDS.
In an interview with ISNA, Hamid-Reza Shaeri stated that an extensive educational scheme will be launched countrywide by the yearend (March 20).
He explained that apart from current educational programs being executed by the association, the entity is to carry out a project in cooperation with United Nations Development Program and Ministry of Health, Treatment and Medical Education.
As per the scheme titled “Uniform Education“, a number of youth and youngsters are selected and trained to instruct their peers on how to keep the disease at bay, the expert elaborated.
Shaeri noted that the project will mainly target schoolchildren.
The official observed that education can play a key role in slowing down the rapid pace of AIDS spread in the country.
He stressed that the association is fully prepared to render services to HIV-positive patients.

Over 1,900 homicides were reported in the country during March 21-Jan. 20, commander of Criminal Investigation Department of Islamic Republic of Iran Police was quoted by the Persian daily Etemad-e Melli as saying.
“Some 1,904 murders occurred in the country during the first 10 months of the current Iranian year showing a 6.4-percent reduction compared to corresponding figures of last year,“ Brigadier Seyyed Ali Asghar Jafari stated.
Speaking to reporters at IRIP’s Public Monitoring Center, the official recalled that 2,304 homicides had been registered by the department during March 21, 2005-Jan. 20, 2006.
He cited police information based on which murder cases reduced by 400 in the current year compared to last year’s figures.
Jafari noted that most homicides were registered in provinces of Fars, Kerman, Sistan-Baluchestan and Khuzestan, with honor killings on top of the list.
Most victims in these provinces were wives and sisters killed due to unfounded suspicion, he explained.
The CID commander noted that the police are taking serious steps to prevent crimes--major delinquencies such as sexual abuse, bank robbery and kidnapping in particular.
Turning to CID’s plans for the upcoming Iranian year (to start March 21), Jafari said the department would benefit from the services of public volunteers.
Volunteers would help the department discover those missing, the bodies of victims as well as the criminals, he concluded.

Old men shooting the breeze in Tehran's Laleh Park

Nearly 87 percent of Iranians are literate, deputy head of Literacy Campaign Organization stated.
As reported by Mehr news agency, Ali Vatani put the number of Iranians who cannot read and write at eight million.
He said all under-50 Iranians have to be literate by the end of the fifth five-year development plan (2015).
Meanwhile, deputy LCO chief for development and management underlined that illiteracy is seen among all age groups in the country.
Parviz Kowsari, however, elaborated that half of the eight million illiterate population are above 50.
The number of women who are unable to read and write is higher than men.
The official recalled that the number of literate men was 23 percent higher than literate women during the pre-revolution era.
The gap has narrowed to 5 percent since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, he added.
Kowsari noted that the number of literate individuals is 7 percent higher in urban areas compared to rural districts.

Volunteer members of Basij Medical Community have distributed 114 million rials worth of free medications among patients from disadvantaged backgrounds during the past nine months, ISNA reported.
Chairmen of the community, Khosrow Jadidi, said the humanitarian scheme was conducted within the framework of Hejrat Camps of Construction Basij with an aim to promote healthcare standards in deprived rural areas.
Pointing to free visits by general practitioners and specialists to more than 130,000 underprivileged patients, he said, “Emergency medical teams of Basij were assigned to far-flung rural districts to offer medical and healthcare services as part of Hejrat Camp programs.“
Also, distribution of 83,000 educational packages, instruction of rural population on nutrition and healthcare as well as free counseling were among the services rendered by the Basij volunteers, he added.
“In collaboration with the Red Crescent Society, physicians of the Basij Medical Community were dispatched to hard-to-reach areas in Chaharmahal-Bakhtiari and Lorestan provinces by helicopter to visit more than 1,700 patients during the mentioned period,“ he explained.

A pilot plan is underway in Rajaei-Shahr and Evin prisons to teach basic life skills to inmates, a prison education expert said. Talking to ILNA, Ashraf Seyyednejad stated that prisoners are undergoing training to help boost their ego and self-respect and to teach them how to say ’no’.
The official noted that the scheme will be implemented in all prisons once the pilot phase is over.
“Families of the inmates will also receive life skills education and will be required to observe certain issues during their interactions with the inmates,“ he concluded.

Sixth Conference of Iran Aerospace Association, slated for Feb. 24-26 in Tehran, is going to feature 390 scientific papers selected by the secretariat of the event.
Fars news agency quoted secretary of the conference, Masoud Mirzaei, as saying that “there was a substantial increase in the number of papers submitted to the secretariat this year. We received 1,200 papers compared to less than 700 sent to the secretariat for the last conference.“
He believes the almost twofold increase is a sign of expansion of research activities in the field of aerospace. “The majority of papers have been authored inside the country, with a limited number received from the Netherlands, Russia, Ukraine and Romania,“ he mentioned.
“The papers were carefully evaluated by 1,400 faculty members. This was a tough task because a limited number of them had to be selected for presentation at the conference.“
Some 287 papers will be presented as lectures and 97 others as posters, 10 of them submitted by foreign researchers.

Broadband Internet connections in Africa are expected to more than double by 2011, but the continent is falling further behind the rest of the world as governments fail to open markets and drive down costs.
High-speed Internet connections in Africa--including DSL, WiMax and wireless technologies such as 3G--are likely to rise to seven million by 2011 from three million now, according to a recent report by South African research group BMI-TechKnowledge.
That compares with almost 70 million connections already in European Union countries. The gap means broadband services will be inaccessible to all but a few rich and privileged Africans, which is likely to deter needed foreign investment.
“Africa is very far behind the rest of the world, and it seems that the gap will only get bigger unless something is done,“ BMI telecoms analyst Richard Hurst, who co-authored the report, told Reuters.
Less than 1 percent of Africans have access to broadband services due to a lack of international connectivity and unwieldy monopolies, compared with 22 percent of Americans and 30 percent of western Europeans, Hurst said. More than three-quarters of Internet connections in Africa are dial-up.
North Africans are the most Internet-savvy on the continent, because governments have liberalized telecoms sectors, while Internet service providers can get access to a number of undersea cables thanks to their proximity to Europe.
But in East Africa, broadband is virtually non-existent, because there is no undersea cable linking countries to the rest of the world, forcing ISPs to rely on expensive and unreliable satellite connections.
East African countries are meant to be building an undersea cable, but the project has stalled. While other companies, including India’s Reliance Communications, have expressed interest in laying a rival cable, the project will take time.
Poor Internet access and high costs are preventing countries such as Kenya from nurturing call-center outsourcing industries, which could provide thousands of jobs.
Even in South Africa, the continent’s economic powerhouse, state-controlled fixed-line operator Telkom has a stranglehold over the telecoms market, keeping DSL connections--a technology that enables broadband access through standard copper phone wires--to some 200,000, just 0.4 percent of the population.