The Iranian Foreign Ministry is going to introduce two women as new ambassadors, an unnamed source from the ministry told the Shargh newspaper.

The Rouhani administration, especially the current foreign minister, believes in the competence of women and are looking forward to make more use of women in high-ranking diplomatic positions, the daily reported on Tuesday, quoting the source.

/ Tehran times /

Parviz Shahinkhu, the Iranian star of Tunisian filmmaker Nacer Khemir’s 2005 acclaimed drama “Bab’Aziz – The Prince That Contemplated His Soul”, died of respiratory problems at his home in Tehran on Saturday. He was at 101.

“He passed away in the early hours of Saturday while he was bedridden over the past month,” his daughter, Mina, told the Persian service of MNA.

Shahinkhu’s last public appearance was in last September when he attended the 17th Iran Cinema Celebration, during which his 100th birthday was also celebrated.

Shahinkhu was also famous for his parts in the popular series “Qarib’s Life”, filmmaker Kianush Ayyari’s biopic on Mohammad Qarib (1909-1974), the founder of pediatrics in Iran, and Amrollah Ahmadju’s “Once Upon a Time” about Hesam Beik and Morad Beik, the leaders of two major bandit gangs that attacked travelers before Reza Shah came to power in Iran in 1925.

Born in 1915, he acted in “Haji Agha, the Cinema Actor” (1934) and “Abi and Rabi” (1935) Iran’s first and second movies directed by Ovanes Oganians, a Russian-Armenian migrant.

He played the parts of many wise characters in dozens of movies, telefilms and series.

/ Tehran times /

An international Olympiad of math, chemistry and statistics will open today in Tehran’s Shahid Beheshti University, Tasnim news agency reported.

Starting from Sunday the event will last for five days and students from Russia, Tatarstan, Ukraine, Turkmenistan, Aljazeera, India, Iraq, Poland, and Slovenia along with Iranian students will compete against one another for the first three places.

50 foreign students, 12 foreign professors and 15 Iranian students will take part in the examination.

Students will take the exams for two days and get the final results after two days on Thursday and those come into first three places in each field will be awarded with medals on the closing ceremony of the event.  / Tehran times /

“Green Relief”, a scheme co-developed by Iran’s Red Crescent Society (IRCS) and the Department of Environment (DoE) aims to reduce environmental damages in the near future.

This scheme is intended for minimizing detrimental effects on the environment by taking preventive measures as well as training  volunteers and promoting the culture of environment protection among the public, Tasnim quoted IRCS official Farahnaz Rafe’ as saying.

She noted that waste problem, water crisis, deforestation, desertification, forests fire, air pollution, sustainable development, etc. would be the issues which receive priority in this scheme.

/ Tehran times /

The 8th round of the Razavi International Cardiovascular Congress opened on Wednesday at Razavi Hospital in Mashhad, the capital of northeastern province of Khorasan Razavi. The three-day meeting will present the latest research and scientific achievements in treatment of cardiovascular diseases and provide a platform for sharing experience between foreign and local experts, medcongress.ir reported. Over 400 domestic and foreign surgeons, cardiologists and doctors from Germany, Britain, US, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Turkey, India, Egypt, South Korea, Vietnam and Ireland are participating.

/financialtribune.com/

Golestan Gallery in Tehran will, like in the past years, hold the exhibition ‘100 Works, 100 Artists’ this summer too. The show is set to open on July 22.

Known as the oldest visual arts event run by the private sector in Iran, this year it will present 220 paintings, calligraphy paintings and sculptures from 195 artists, Mehr News Agency reported.

“The presence of artists from outside Tehran and presentation of sculptures are significant in this year’s edition,” gallery director Lili Golestan said.

High quality of artworks as well as reasonable prices are the two factors considered in the 24th edition.

The highest price tag is for a painting by the late contemporary poet Sohrab Sepehri ($70,000); however, in order to attract and encourage people from different social strata to purchase pieces of art, the gallery will also present works costing as low as $30.

Since the gallery motto is “Any Iranian Home, One Art Piece”, it has always paid serious attention towards the ordinary people by providing them with affordable artworks.

Of the 195 artists, 130 are women and 65 men. A total of 190 paintings and calligraphy paintings will be put on display besides 30 sculptures.

Born in Tehran, Lili, 72, studied dress and textile design at the Decorative Art Institute of Paris. Simultaneously, she attended classes on world art history and French literature at La Sorbonne. While in Paris, she also participated in pottery classes.

After she returned home she took up a job as a textile designer at a textile factory. Later, she worked in national television as a dress designer for TV shows.

She quit her TV job after seven years and published her first translation of a novel in 1967: ‘Life, War and Then Nothing’ by Italian author Oriana Fallaci. The book was welcomed and encouraged her to translate more novels. She has since published more than 20 books.

Lili founded Golestan Gallery in 1988 and since then has tried to make it easy for people to buy art, support new talent and young artists and take strong steps to expand the horizons of art in society.

She is the daughter of well-known filmmaker and writer Ebrahim Golestan and sister of the late photojournalist Kaveh Golestan. Filmmaker Mani Haghighi is her son.

The exhibition will run till August 17, at No. 34, Shahid Kamasai Ave., Darouss.

/financialtribune.com/

Iran has signed some $4.2 billion worth of industrial and commercial agreements with European countries after signing last year’s nuclear deal with P5+1 (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany), also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, an advisor to the minister of industries, mining and trade, said.

“More than 57% of these agreements, amounting to $2.4 billion, have been put into effect,” Behrouz Riyahi was also quoted as saying by IRNA.

The JCPOA reached in Vienna, Austria, on July 14, 2015, saw the lifting of economic sanctions against Iran on the one hand and enforcement of limits on the country’s nuclear program on the other. The landmark agreement was implemented on January 16 this year.

/financialtribune.com/

Iran produced 8.806 million tons of crude steel in the first half of 2016, up 5.2 percent compared to the same period in previous year, the World Steel Association (WSA) reported.

According to the WSA’s latest report, registering the mentioned growth the country stood at the 12th place among top world’s steel producers leaving Mexico behind.

The country produced 8.372 million tons of crude steel in the first half of 2015. This is the second time that WSA upgrades Iran’s place in its ranking lists released in the current year.

It is worth mentioning that while Iran’s crude steel production grew during the said period, the world’s steel production declined 1.9 percent to 794 million tons compared to the same period last year.

In WSA ranking, China seized the first place with 399 million tons of steel produced in the first half of 2016 and marked itself as the world’s biggest steel producer. Japan stood at the second place with 52 million tons and India with 40 million tons of steel production holds the third place.

As a major steel producer in the region, Iran boosted its steel mills across the country in recent years, as central Isfahan and southwestern Khuzestan provinces remain the major steel producers.

According to WSA, Iran was the biggest producer of crude steel in the Middle East in 2013. The country’s rank was 14th in the world in 2014.   /Tehran times /