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Prayer Time (Tehran)
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Dawn: 5:41
Sunrise: 7:08
Noon: 12:17
Evening: 17:45
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Weather Guide
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WED |
THU |
Tehran: |
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High: |
9 oC |
9 oC |
Low: |
-1 oC |
0 oC |
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Athens |
1 |
5 |
Ankara |
-1 |
0 |
Paris |
-4 |
-3 |
New Delhi |
7 |
8 |
Rome |
-2 |
-1 |
Riyadh |
6 |
7 |
Frankfurt |
-6 |
-5 |
Cairo |
11 |
12 |
Kuwait City |
3 |
4 |
Karachi |
11 |
8 |
Copenhagen |
-5 |
-4 |
London |
0 |
1 |
Moscow |
-10 |
-10 |
Madrid |
-5 |
-2 |
Vienna |
-6 |
-6 |
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Identification
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Published by the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA)
Address:
Iran Cultural & Press Institute, #212 Khorramshahr Avenue Tehran/Iran
Managing Director: Mohammad T. Roghaniha
Executive Editor: Amin Sabooni
Editorial Dept. Tel: 8755761-2
Editorial Dept. Fax: 8761869
Advertising Dept. Tel: 8753119, 8757702, 8733764
Internet Address:
www.iran-daily.com
E-mail Address:
iran-daily@iran-daily.com
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Leader Supports Tehran-Baku Ties
TEHRAN, Jan. 25--Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, received visiting Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev on Tuesday and referred to the long-term prospect of Tehran-Baku ties as "bright and promising".
Speaking to the Azeri president who was accompanied by his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Khatami, the leader praised the growing trend of bilateral relations between Tehran and Baku, IRNA reported.
"Iran and Azerbaijan will always stay by the side of each other," he said, emphasizing that Tehran and Baku should not allow their friendly relations to "be influenced by the policies of foreigners".
He also said that the two countries shared common views on many issues, calling on Tehran and Baku to promote all-out cooperation in the political, economic, trade, cultural and security fields.
Noting that Americans were "not reliable", the leader said promotion of Tehran-Baku relations would guarantee the interests of both sides.
Stressing the significance attached by Tehran to its relations with Baku, Ayatollah Khamenei said any dispute between the two sides, including one relating to the legal regime of the Caspian Sea, would be settled in a 'friendly' manner.
The Azeri president noted that Tehran-Baku relations were growing in steadily and "nothing could hamper this trend".
Noting that promotion of bilateral relations was a political priority for Baku, Aliyev said documents, which are to be signed during his visit to Tehran, would help boost Tehran-Baku relations.
Some 20 documents are expected to be signed by the two sides for promoting Tehran-Baku cooperation during the three-day stay of the Azeri president in Tehran.
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US Backs Iran Diplomacy over Military Action
LONDON, Jan. 25--After talks with US Secretary of State nominee Condoleezza Rice, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said top officials in Washington support the use of diplomacy over military action in dealings with Iran.
"The issue of a military option simply wasn't raised today," Straw told the BBC after his meeting in Washington with Rice, AFP reported.
US Vice President Dick Cheney, who has called Iran's controversial nuclear ambitions one of Washington's main concerns, said that "he backs a diplomatic approach to Iran", Straw recalled.
He said the difficulty was to decide how to work with Iran and how to make sure that its future activities are "entirely for peaceful purposes and (that) there's no intention, no possibility, that it's being used for nuclear weapons purposes".
The British foreign secretary has reportedly produced a hefty dossier to argue London's case for a "negotiated solution" rather than military action to thwart Tehran's suspected ambitions to produce nuclear weapons.
The dossier, reports say, calls a peaceful solution led by Britain, France and Germany "in the best interests of Iran and the international community", while referring to "safeguarding Iran's right to the peaceful use of nuclear technology".
The BBC reported that tensions were running high between London and Washington, staunch allies during the Iraq war and the war on terrorism, over the Iran issue.
Britain, France and Germany have spearheaded efforts to get Iran to halt its sensitive nuclear work, including uranium enrichment, while the United States has advocated taking a hard line against what it sees as deception by the Islamic Republic.
The perception that Washington is embarking on a course of confrontation with Iran has grown since The New Yorker magazine reported last week that US commandos have been operating inside Iran since mid-2004, secretly scouting targets for possible air strikes.
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Iraqi Troops Accused of Torture
BAGHDAD, Iraq,
Jan. 25--Gunmen shot dead a top Iraqi judge as charges that Iraqi forces were torturing suspects brought a grim reminder of Saddam Hussein's regime just days before elections are due to usher in democracy.
Accusations that Iraqi troops are using electric shocks on captives' genitals and earlobes and that male and female Iraqi detainees are subject to forced sodomy, cigarette burns and beatings, came from two civil rights groups, Reuters reported.
And a US official, whose troops' behavior in Abu Ghraib prison shocked the world, said that the embassy in Baghdad was concerned enough to raise the problem with the Iraqi government.
"Their record is not spotless on human rights," the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
With the national elections now only five days away, Sunni militants raised the temperature in the streets of Baghdad.
In a daylight ambush, assailants gunned down a senior Baghdad judge and his brother-in-law and then danced in the street, shouting "this is what will happen to the traitor Shiites".
Judge Qaiss Hashem Al-Shamari, 32, the secretary of Iraq's council of judges, who was driving with his brother-in-law, died in a hail of bullets.
The latest killings followed a warning from Iraq's most-wanted terrorist, Abu Mussab Al-Zarqawi, who said snipers would take out Iraqis who try to vote in the elections.
The rights group's investigation was based on interviews with 90 detainees in Iraq, including 72 who claimed to have been tortured or ill treated, particularly under interrogation. Its probe was conducted between July and October 2004.
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Annan Urges Nations:
Learn From Holocaust
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UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan speaks during the opening of a photo exhibit, entitled "Auschwitz--the Depth of the Abyss," at the United Nations in New York, Jan. 25. (Reuters Photo)
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UNITED NATIONS, Jan. 25--The evil perpetrated by the Nazis during World War II must never be allowed to happen again, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned as the UN General Assembly held in a special meeting to mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp.
"Such an evil must never be allowed to happen again," Annan told the assembly Monday, noting that the world body was born from the ashes of the Holocaust. "We must be on the watch for any revival of anti-Semitism, and ready to act against the new forms of it that are happening today," AFP reported.
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Weisel described Auschwitz, where some 1.1 million people perished, as "an executioner's ideal of a kingdom of absolute evil and malediction".
Annan noted that Gypsies, Poles and other Slavs, Soviet prisoners of war, and mentally or physically handicapped people, homosexuals and others were also "massacred in cold blood" in Nazi extermination camps.
However, he noted with deep regret that efforts to wipe out masses of people have continued over the decades in Cambodia, Rwanda and in the former Yugoslavia.
He made special mention of the continuing crisis in the Darfur region of western Sudan, one of the world's most pressing humanitarian emergencies.
Annan said the report will be a test of whether the United Nations had in fact learned the lessons from Europe's mass exterminations 60 years ago.
Monday's session at the General Assembly began with one minute of silence and came three days ahead of the actual anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, in Poland, by Soviet troops on January 27, 1945.
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71 Journalists Died In 2004
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An Irish Guard 7th Armour Brigade soldier takes aim as journalists take cover along the road out of Basra, Iraq. (Google File Photo)
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PARIS, Jan. 25--Seventy-one journalists and other media workers were killed because of their professional activities in 2004, with 23 of them killed in Iraq, the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) reported Tuesday.
The toll was the highest for a single year since 1994, when 73 were killed, it said, AFP reported.
After Iraq, the Philippines was the second most deadly place for journalists, with 11 killed in 2004, compared with seven killed the previous year.
"While war and terrorism accounted for a large number of deaths, many reporters who investigate organized crime, drug trafficking, corruption and other crimes also fell victim to assassins," said WAN Director General Timothy Balding.
"Around the world, hundreds of journalists have been killed in the past decade. In more than two-thirds of the cases, no one has been brought to justice, much less convicted," he said.
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Indians Pilgrims Trampled to Death
SATARA, India,
Jan. 25--More than 300 Hindu pilgrims were trampled to death and 200 injured Tuesday in a stampede at a religious festival in western India, police said.
Additional Director General of Police V.N. Deshmukh said most of the dead were women and children who were jammed into a hilltop temple and narrow access road, AFP reported.
"Over 300 were killed and four buses full of injured people have been sent to various local hospitals in the district of Satara," Deshmukh in Bombay said.
He warned the death and injury toll was expected to go up as the bodies of the dead and injured arrived at hospitals in Satara district, 300 kilometers (180 miles) south of Bombay, a correspondent reported.
The police official said 300,000 to 400,000 people had gathered at the temple site for the sighting of the full moon on Tuesday night.
Varying reasons were given for the cause of the midday stampede, which was the deadliest in years at a religious event in India where sometimes millions of people mass in perilous safety conditions.
Deshmukh said the crush was triggered by a clash between pilgrims and a few shopkeepers that was followed by a gas cylinder blast which caused more panic.
The tragedy occurred during the annual pilgrimage to the Mandhradevi temple near the town of Wai in Satara district. The hillside temple is dedicated to the Hindu goddess Mandhradevi.
Police said chaos followed the stampede.
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Over 230,000 Iraqi Expats Register to Vote
TEHRAN, Jan. 25--Iraq's Independent Election Committee (IIEC) announced Monday that 48,010 Iraqis residing in Iran had registered to vote in January 30th Iraqi parliamentary elections.
The communique issued on the occasion, a copy of which was faxed to IRNA's Central Office in Tehran, said, "During the past seven days, more than 48,000 Iraqis referred at 12 registration centers in six major Iranian cities, where they presented their Iraqi IDs and got special slips required for participation at the poll."
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) has been commissioned by the IIEC for facilitating the Iraqi expatriates to vote in various countries.
According to IIEC's communique, so far 237,704 Iraqi expatriates have registered to vote in January 28th-30th nationwide Iraqi elections in 14 countries.
The deadline for registration of Iraqi citizens residing in Iran ended on January 23rd, but due to their high turnout, it was extended for another 48 hours.
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Tsunami Toll Exceeds 280,000
JAKARTA, Indonesia, Jan. 25--The death toll from the Indian ocean tsunami continued its sickening rise Tuesday with more than 280,000 people now presumed dead as bodies continued to be recovered one month after the catastrophe.
In Indonesia, whose Aceh province lost entire stretches of heavily-populated coastline when waves crashed ashore in 11 Indian Ocean countries, health officials listed 228,429 as dead or missing, AFP reported.
Chadijah, an official with the health ministry's center for prevention of health problems, said that while the missing were not officially presumed dead, there was now little hope of their survival.
With an intense relief effort still underway in Indonesia despite the departure of some foreign military, it was hoped new progress in securing a peace with rebels in the region could remove a security obstacle to aid deliveries.
An official source confirmed Tuesday that Indonesia's security minister Widodo Adi Sucipto was to lead a high-profile team to Finland this week for the talks with Aceh separatists, an official source said.
Finland had indicated earlier this week that it was laying the groundwork for talks between the Indonesian government and guerrillas who have been fighting a decades-long war for independence.
But the source said the talks had still to be fully confirmed and was unable to say when the officials would leave or how long they would be in Finland.
Both the rebels and government have pledged their commitment to peace, but resistance was expected from Indonesia's military and guerrillas on the ground with neither side keen to surrender through diplomacy what they had fought for.
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Critical Thinking
By Ali Taheri
More often it's the ability to argue and advance one's views in contrast to others which is important.
Well-known personalities tend to prove that the power of reasoning is not the main issue--it's the ability to express that counts.
Consider two persons with entirely opposite views holding a public debate separately on a political or socioeconomic subject. Although logical reasoning can lead to the supremacy of one line of thought over another, this is not the only determining factor.
One of the persons could be weaker in terms of scientific and logical reasoning, but may know how to have a rhetorical effect on listeners and even convince his rival of the soundness of his ideology. And the rival, who has a stronger case, may simply fail to make the point in an impressive manner.
Now the question is whether those who pursue political or economic strategies adhere to scientific methods in their arguments or only know how to employ rhetoric?
Perhaps what in fact legitimizes these strategies in the eyes of the public is that the initiators are reputable politicians and economists or holding high academic degrees. These attributions at times mislead people into believing that whatever they say must be true, because "they know what they are saying", as the saying goes. However, the opposite could be true.
Fortunately people are smart enough to separate the wheat from the chaff. They tend to accept only statements that are true and logical.
As long as we pay obeisance to traditional allegiances, we cannot undertake critical thinking. By the same token, as long as the validity of a theory depends on the assessment of a particular personality per se and not logic or truth, the public opinion will not buy the argument.
In fact non-scientific thinking and strategies are currently being touted while the masses do not even know their true worth. It is one thing to appeal to the masses and another to do what is correct and necessary.
Do we prefer demagogue to right action? It seems many of our officials do. The only way to overcome this situation is to promote awareness and allow criticism. Although this is a time-consuming process, the fruits it will bear will forge better ties between the ruled and the rulers and strengthen the society's foundations.
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