As per the law, the first day of lunar month of Zihajjeh marking the wedding anniversary of Hazrat Fatemeh (SA) and Imam Ali (AS) was designated as the National Youth Marriage Day.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has assigned Planning and Management Organization to establish a fund to facilitate marriage among the youth.
According to Fars news agency, the Youth Marriage Reserve Fund would be set up to help the young people tie the knot.
Secretariat of the Government’s Information Dissemination Council reported that the chief executive had notified MPO of the Law to Facilitate Youth Marriages.
Article One of the newly-endorsed law stipulates that the government is duty-bound to work out the fund’s articles of association and submit it to the Majlis within three months.
The Ahmadinejad administration, as envisaged by the law, is obliged to grant financial aid to young couples for house rentals through the fund’s deposits.
In addition to mass construction of inexpensive and small residential units, the government needs to employ modern urban development methods to provide the young couples with residence.
Apart from current housing facilities (mass construction and hire-purchase apartments), “Temporary Housing“ options should also be made available for young couples. Under this scheme, apartment buildings are constructed in lands either purchased by the government or donated by benevolent people.
Public entities such as municipalities and the Organization for Religious Endowments and Charity Affairs should also help the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development and Islamic Revolution Housing Foundation in their endeavors.
Young couples will be allowed to live in the inexpensive units for a maximum three years.
The law also obliges the government to adopt policies to rectify incorrect traditions which impede marriages, encouraging mass austere weddings.
Print and broadcast media like the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting should carry programs to educate the public on pre- and post-nuptial skills as well as propagate the Islamic tradition of simple weddings.
As per the law, the first day of lunar month of Zihajjeh marking the wedding anniversary of Hazrat Fatemeh (SA), the beloved daughter of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), and Imam Ali (AS), the first Imam of the prophet’s infallible household, was designated as the National Youth Marriage Day.
Article Six of the same law envisages that committees comprising governor generals, Friday prayer leaders, and chairmen of Islamic councils would be set up in cities to tackle issues relating to youth marriages.
All related state bodies have been obligated to assist the committees.

As per a cabinet approval, carmakers have been obliged to give 15 and 30-million-rial discounts respectively to the owners of rundown cars with white and red license plate numbers.

Deputy head of the Department of Environment blamed both the Ministry of Industries and Mines and the domestic automakers for the failure of the plan to phase out rundown cars.
In a talk with Fars news agency, Seyyed Khallaq Mirnia elaborated on the reasons behind the failure to hit the target.
He put the bulk of the blame on carmakers for failing to oblige their regional agents to sell brand-new cars on installments to owners of dilapidated vehicles in exchange for scrapping their cars.
“The Industries and Mines Ministry on the other hand has not provided proper cannibalization centers where the cars could be cannibalized instead of being dumped in parking lots,“ he added, also blaming shortage of liquidity for the failure of the plan.
Mirnia stated that as per a cabinet approval, carmakers have been obliged to give 15 and 30-million-rial discounts respectively to the owners of rundown cars with white and red license plate numbers.
The carmakers will be reimbursed through cut-rate customs duties offered by the Customs Administration. The administration is to reimburse 4,500 billion rials to carmakers within a maximum two years for scrapping 200,000 dilapidated cars by March.
“However, the automakers are grappled with shortage of liquidity, making this a very slow process,“ he added.
The official further noted that of the 200,000 old cars estimated to be phased out by the yearend (March 20), only 10,000 have so far been junked. “In view of the dominant bureaucratic obstacles, the project seems to be not viable,“ he analyzed.
Mirnia stressed that although the DoE fully supervises the schemes, so far the Industries and Mines Ministry has failed to fulfill its responsibilities in this regard.

The capacity of makeshift centers for vagrants and beggars in the megapolis has increased.

Deputy Tehran governor general for political and security affairs observed that 96 percent of beggars rounded up from the streets by the police during the past three months are residents of other cities who have migrated to the capital in search of jobs, Fars news agency reported.
Abdollah Roshan was quoted by Public Relations Department of Tehran Governor General’s Office as saying during a meeting of the Taskforce for Rehabilitation of Rough-Sleepers and Mendicants that the capacity of makeshift centers for vagrants and beggars in the megapolis had increased.
The official stated that at present, warm shelters are able to accommodate 530 vagrants; while makeshift ones can provide refuge for 450.
Highlighting that Tehran Municipality’s five warm shelters are fully prepared to put up those without a roof over their heads, he stressed that 50 percent of the capacity of Kahrizak Charity Institution is vacant at present.
Roshan put the number of beggars and rough-sleepers mopped up from Tehran at 570 since Oct. 23.
Meanwhile, deputy Tehran governor general for social affairs told ISNA that a new round of operations to collect street kids from streets of Tehran would start as of next month.
Saeed Shamseddin stated that a memorandum of understanding was signed between the Governor General’s Office and State Welfare Organization to set up the Street Children Taskforce and its secretariat.
As per the agreement, SWO pledged to set aside over 30 billion rials for the execution of the scheme.
The official noted that the Governor General’s Office was assigned to coordinate and oversee the executive procedures.
According to Shamseddin, Islamic Republic of Iran Police, Tehran Municipality, Justice Department, Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, Medical Insurance Organization, provincial TV channel of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, and Iran Red Crescent Society are other state organizations responsible for executing the scheme.
Turning to figures on adult rough-sleepers, the official revealed that over 1,000 homeless individuals had been rounded up in Tehran during Nov. 22, 2005-Oct. 23, 2006.

Hemophiliac Patients Center is awaiting the establishment of the pledged fund for supporting patients who have incurred losses as a result of contaminated blood transfusion, ILNA said.
Secretary general of the center, Ahmad Qavidel, pointed out to promises made by the Health Ministry to set up the fund soon.
Qavidel noted no information is yet available regarding the details of the plan.
“The fund is expected to indemnify patients who have been infected through contaminated blood and blood products. Hemophiliac patients comprise the majority of the target group,“ he stated.
Qavidel insisted that the project needs to be put into practice as soon as possible.
Meanwhile, Minister of Health, Treatment and Medical Education, Kamran Baqeri Lankarani, said measures were underway to provide hemophilic patients with free clotting factor and medications.
The Health Ministry has proposed that hemophiliac patients infected through transfusion of contaminated blood be compensated. “The Management and Planning Organization is trying to procure the fund for the indemnification and incorporate it into the annual budget.“
Commenting on supplying free medications for patients with special diseases, Lankarani added, “The Health Ministry is not the sole decision-maker in this regard. We have put forth proposals which we hope will be accepted.“
Lankarani further highlighted moral values as the basis of all works in the ministry and concluded governmental sectors should all adopt a similar approach.

People at a bazaar in Rasht, Gilan province (Photo by Shohreh Haqiqat)

European Union justice and interior ministers gave broad backing to a plan to create “rapid intervention teams“ to help members cope with sudden influxes of illegal immigrants or asylum-seekers, Reuters reported.
Six hundred illegal immigrants landed in one day on the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa in May last year and there are concerns that other member states, such as Malta, are also struggling with a rising number of refugees to their shores.
The move could create as early as this year mobile pools of interpreters, case-handlers and even psychologists from across the bloc to help national authorities interview asylum-seekers and to ascertain their status and country of origin.
“We are very interested in creating those teams,“ Austrian Interior Minister Liese Prokop, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the EU, told Reuters.
The EU executive Commission has already started internal work on the idea. Germany and Luxembourg both said they backed the proposal and diplomats said it won broad support from other ministers there.
The measure would be funded from existing EU funds. Asked when the teams could be up and running, a spokesman for EU Justice and Security Commissioner Franco Frattini said, “Hopefully this year. If possible before the new drowning season--in May-June, when the Mediterranean starts being calmer and people leave from Libya and Morocco.“
Boats sometimes carrying hundreds of illegal immigrants, regularly arrive at Lampedusa, located just 120 km from the shores of the north African country of Tunisia.
EU officials say the Mediterranean island of Malta, which counted 1,800 arrivals of illegal immigrants in 2005, had been seeking EU help, arguing it does not have the resources to cope.

Bulgaria risks losing a third of its 7.6 million population by the year 2050 and is seeking to employ urgent measures to boost the birth rate, AFP reported.
The Balkan country’s government made encouraging births a national priority after a recent report by the Academy of Sciences predicted that Bulgaria’s population would fall from eight million in 2001 to seven million in 2020, and drop to between 5.5 and 4.5 million by 2050.
The tendency was confirmed in a recent report by the US Population Reference Bureau, which forecast Bulgaria’s population would dwindle 34 percent by 2050. This would be the largest population slump in the whole of Europe and among the worst in among the 212 countries monitored by the Bureau.
Apart from a falling birth rate, the report showed Bulgaria’s population is progressively ageing: youngsters under 15 are now making up only 14 percent of the population, while elders aged 65 or more have shot up to over 17 percent.
“The demographic crisis is a national security problem. It concerns the quality of the workforce... The official statistical data paints an alarming picture compared to that in the rest of Europe,“ President Georgy Parvanov warned recently.
The National Security Council met earlier for a discussion on the issue that involved members of the government, different parliamentary groups and demography experts. The alarming population perspectives prompted the council to call for immediate measures to boost the birth rate.
For the first time since the fall of Communism, the Bulgarian authorities are taking a close look at population trends. They have proposed measures “to slow down the decline in population, encourage births and improve the quality of the workforce“.
The council recommended that the government provide aid to families who have a second child, housing assistance for newly-wed couples, and even better jobs.
Bulgaria also vowed to combat its child mortality rate--which stands at 13.3 per thousand or three times the rate in European Union countries--by providing better healthcare to women.
“The birth rate is extremely low--a ratio of 1.2 to 1.3 children for each woman of childbearing age, compared to between 1.7 and 1.9 in France and the Scandinavian countries,“ said Tatyana Kotseva, director of the Academy of Science’s center for demographic studies.

Director general of Tehran Physical Education Department said that the per capita sports space is 0.5 square meters in the capital.
As reported by ILNA, Hojjatollah Khatib, who was speaking at a joint meeting of provincial Planning and Development Council and the city’s Planning Committee, stated that about 1,580 sports clubs are run by private sector in Tehran; while 1,072 are affiliated to state organizations as well as the municipality.
He put the number of sports centers controlled by Physical Education Organization at 177 and those under the department’s supervision at 2,830.
The official further noted that 49 Tehrani teams are playing at premier league sports, 24 teams at first league and 19 ones in second league.
Male citizens of the megacity bagged 60 percent of championship medals of various sports competitions; while Tehrani women grabbed 80 percent.
Khatib termed as essential an increase in the sports space in the 10-million-strong capital.
He proposed that parks be turned into gymnasiums and certain garrisons be evacuated for the purpose.
Highlighting that a total 60-billion-rial development fund allocated to the province falls short of the requirements, the official expressed hope that more financial support would be injected into the sector from surplus oil revenues.
Khatib revealed that from a pledged 400-billion-rial budget set aside for the organization, only 40 billion rials had so far been disbursed.