Head of the Headquarters for Holding the 19th Death Anniversary of Imam Khomeini said about two million pilgrims will attend the demise anniversary ceremony.
According to Fars News Agency, Mohammad Eidian added, “The headquarters has started its activities since April 20. Four committees, namely public transportation, safety services, cultural and dissemination of information as well as health, have been established. Our priority is to overcome the problems we encountered in last year’s ceremony.“
He went on to note: “It is forecast that 1.5 million pilgrims from other provinces of country attend the ceremony. We need 32,000 to 40,000 buses for transporting these people. It is also predicted that 300,000 pilgrims from Tehran province and 200,000 pilgrims from cities near Tehran attend the ceremony.“

Imam KhomeiniÕs Mausoleum

The official recalled that this time around 11 parking lots have been prepared.
“Furthermore, we have asphalted the roads of the area starting on April 20. We hope that all construction works end by May 30,“ he said.
Eidian emphasized that four traffic control cameras will be installed in key areas in order to control contingent traffic jams.
He recalled that on the eve of June 2 subway will not be closed and on June 3 people can get on the subway free of charge.
“Mopping up stray dogs, renovating green areas, and painting water closets of the areas near the Imam’s mausoleum have been put on agenda of the headquarters,“ he noted.
He referred to the fact that last year cellular phones had no reception in the vicinity of the shrine.
“This year we have considered 21 fixed phone lines to avoid last year’s problem,“ he said.
The official concluded by saying that Shahr-e Salem (Healthy City) Company will put up a 27-bed hospital in the region to render medical services to people when necessary.

The saying goes that money can’t buy happiness. But inquiring economists have been working for decades trying to prove or disprove the notion.
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business released a study in April showing “a clear positive link“ between wealth and “subjective wellbeing,“ based on global surveys.
While this may seem logical to some, the research flew in the face of a longstanding theory that happiness of a country’s population does not rise with income, after certain basic needs are met, AFP reported.
This theory, dubbed the “Easterlin Paradox,“ was developed in 1974 by Richard Easterlin, an economist currently on the faculty at the University of Southern California.
Easterlin’s research had drawn on surveys notably from Japan, where surveys had shown little or no increase in national happiness despite the country’s post-World War II economic miracle.
Wharton economists Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers contend in the new research that better data over the past three decades and a closer analysis suggests the Easterlin Paradox is flawed.
They found that the wealthiest countries in terms of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita rank near the top of surveys on happiness, with the poorest at the bottom. More significantly, within each country, higher incomes translated to higher ratings of life satisfaction, they found.
“There appears to be a very strong relationship between subjective wellbeing and income, which holds for both rich and poor countries, falsifying earlier claims of a satiation point at which higher GDP is not associated with greater wellbeing,“ they said in a paper to be published by the Brookings Institution.
The results have important implications for public policy. Stevenson and Wolfers note that economic growth might not be considered an important policy goal if it does little to raise wellbeing.
The researchers said they were not seeking to make any political point or support an ideology.
Although backers of the Easterlin theory say it argues against unbridled pro-growth capitalism, Stevenson said the new research could also be used to promote more distribution of wealth.
Accordingly, she said redistributing income from the rich to the poor could increase a country’s overall happiness quotient.
Easterlin, meanwhile, stands by his research, updated several times since the 1970s.

Even very premature babies benefit from skin to skin contact with their parents, research suggests.
A Canadian study found that cuddling babies born as early as 28 weeks reduced the stress of painful medical procedures which many must undergo.
Writing in the journal BMC Pediatrics, the McGill University team said it might aid the recovery process, BBC reported.
UK neonatal units do not always encourage skin to skin contact, said a London-based expert studying the issue.
There is already some evidence that regular cuddling can help babies, even those dependent on incubators, not only by promoting their health, but by encouraging a parental bond which could be important to their progress in months to come.
This study is the first to look at extremely premature babies, born between 28 and 31 weeks.
It was previously thought by some experts that such young babies were not developed enough to benefit from human touch.
A common test used in neonatal units is the “heel prick“ blood test, which produces a sample which can be used to check blood sugar levels.
This is inevitably painful for the baby, and in some cases, it can take minutes for this distress to recede--which could be a problem for a baby whose health is in the balance.
The McGill researchers carried out the test on some babies who were being actively cuddled, skin to skin, measuring facial expressions, heart rate and blood oxygen levels to assess the amount of pain suffered.
Pain scores after 90 seconds for the cuddled babies were much lower than for those who were not cuddled.
Half the cuddled babies did not show any facial expression of pain when undergoing a heel prick test.