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Prenuptial training for young people aims to tackle country’s rising divorce rates
There was a time when Iranian women seeking husbands prioritised job status and financial security – not to mention love – at the top of their list of needs.
Now potential suitors face the prospect of having to fulfil a daunting new requirement before asking for a bride’s hand – having the right government certificate.
Acquiring the appropriate official qualifications before popping the question is part of a plan for prenuptial training courses approved by the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, with the aim of reversing declining Iranian marriage rates and rising divorce statistics.
From next week,…
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Iranians who work for foreign media come under threat
Etemaad, Iran’s most prominent reformist daily paper, was closed along with two weekly publications, Irandokht and Sina, a week ago today. Since the disputed election in June, Iran has shut eight newspapers and has imprisoned more than 100 journalists and bloggers. At least 65 remain in jail – more than any country has imprisoned since 1996.
At the beginning of February, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) found vague anti-state charges against detained journalists such as “Propagation against the regime” or insulting authorities and disrupting public order. Despite this, detainees have been sentenced to years of…
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Actress Golshifteh Farahani, exiled in Paris, reveals the pressures on Iran’s artistic community after anti-government film-maker is arrested
Golshifteh Farahani knows how dangerous it is now to be an artist in Tehran. In 2008 she became the first Iranian-based actress in almost 30 years to appear in a Hollywood blockbuster. Starring opposite Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe in Ridley Scott’s Body of Lies, she hoped the film would be appreciated in her homeland for its critical stance on America’s politics in the Middle East.
She was wrong. When she returned to Tehran the then 24-year-old was subjected to seven months of inquisition from the authorities of the Islamic republic….
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Rather than risk a one-term presidency with more failures than victories, he has put foreign goals aside to focus on the domestic
Weeks and months of non-stop mudslinging over healthcare have taken their toll on President Obama and placed his foreign policy agenda on the back burner.
An anxious world is asking what has become of all Obama’s promises to solve the thorniest and most entrenched problems, from the Middle East conflict to closing the internationally reviled Guantánamo prison camp and halting Iran’s nuclear defiance. As the flood of words dissipates with little concrete change to show, hope has faded, leaving disillusionment in its place.
Nowhere is this more true than in the…
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As the United States steps up its push for tough new sanctions against Iran, a top American diplomat said Thursday that hopes of a deal with Iran to curb its nuclear ambitions are fading.
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Offensive remarks on Honduras, gratuitous insults in Brazil – Hillary Clinton’s Latin American tour has not been a success
Hillary Clinton’s Latin America tour is turning out to be about as successful as George W Bush’s visit in 2005, when he ended up leaving Argentina a day ahead of schedule just to get the hell out of town. The main difference is that she is not being greeted with protests and riots. For that she can thank the positive media image that her boss, President Obama, has managed to maintain in the region, despite his continuation of his predecessor’s policies.
But she has been even more diplomatically clumsy that Bush, who at least recognised that there were serious problems…
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Critics say it has been a waste of time but Barack Obama’s worldwide diplomatic outreach is beginning to deliver results
Critics argue that the recent International Atomic Energy Agency report proves that the Obama administration’s policy of engagement has been a waste of time, allowing Iran to make progress toward a bomb without feeling the pain of tougher sanctions. But this myopic view ignores the fact that engagement has created an unprecedented international consensus on the need for coercive action.
By offering an outstretched hand directly to Tehran, the Obama administration clearly exposed the Iranian regime’s erratic behaviour to the rest of the world and legitimised its eventual…
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The west’s moral didacticism now grates more than the realpolitik of China and the east
There were chuckles and sniggers in Qatar last month when Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, warned that a military dictatorship was imminent in Iran. Threatening America’s most intransigent adversary, Clinton seems to have been oblivious to her audience: educated Arabs in the Middle East where America’s military presence has long propped up several dictators, including such stalwart allies in rendition and torture as Hosni Mubarak.
Of course, by her own standards, Clinton was being remarkably nuanced and sober: during the presidential campaign in 2008 she promised to “obliterate” Iran. An…
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Brazil “will not bend” to U.S. pressure to seek sanctions against Iran, Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said after a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Brasilia.
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President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva tells Hillary Clinton he will not be pushed into western-led bid to punish Iran over nuclear issue
Brazil last night rebuffed a US plea to back sanctions against Iran, setting the stage for a bruising diplomatic battle in the UN security council.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva told the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, that he would not be bounced into a western-led effort to punish Tehran over its nuclear programme.
Clinton, stopping in Brasilia during a Latin America tour, had hoped to build support for a UN resolution on sanctions against Iran. As a non-permanent member of the security council, Brazil does not have a veto, but its support…
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Authorities arrested seven people and issued warrants for two more suspected of arms trafficking to Iran, Italian police said Wednesday.
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Journalist Behrang Tonekaboni released on bail two months after his arrest at the offices of a monthly music journal in Tehran
A music journalist who was detained by authorities in Iran has been released from prison.
Amnesty International reports that Behrang Tonekaboni has been released on bail two months after he was arrested at the offices of monthly music journal Farhang va Ahang, in Tehran. His colleague, Kayvan Farzin, and his mother, Lily Farhadpour, were also arrested in January and have not been released. Their whereabouts have not been made public.
A spokesperson for Amnesty International confirmed that no official charges had been made that they were aware of. The human rights…
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Two more Iranians on the run as police hold seven people on suspicion of conspiring to illegally export weapons
Italian detectives have arrested seven people, including two alleged Iranian intelligence officers, on suspicion of plotting to procure arms for Iran.
Arrest warrants have also been issued for two more Iranians who were said to be on the run after a round-up of suspects ordered by prosecutors in Milan. Five Italians were also arrested.
According to Reuters’ Italian newswire, which quoted sources close to the investigation, one of those taken into custody was a lawyer in Turin who also ran an arms trading business. All those arrested were accused of conspiring to illegally export…
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• Panahi held with his wife, daughter and 15 guests on Monday
• Tehran’s prosecutor claims Panahi’s detention is ‘not political’
Iranian security forces have detained Jafar Panahi, one of the country’s most internationally celebrated film-makers, as part of a continuing crackdown on supporters of the opposition Green movement.
Panahi was held with his wife, daughter and 15 guests on Monday evening, according to Kalame, the website of Mir Hossein Mousavi, who claims he won last June’s disputed presidential election.
In the first official comment on the high-profile arrest, Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dowlatabadi was quoted as saying that Panahi’s detention was “not political” and was…
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The Crimson Gold director, who is a vocal supporter of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, has reportedly been detained by security forces
The Iranian director Jafar Panahi has reportedly been detained by security forces in his homeland. Panahi, 49, is a vocal supporter of the opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi and has long been regarded as a pariah by the Iranian establishment. He is currently believed to be being held at an undisclosed location.
Mousavi’s website Kaleme quotes Panahi’s son, who claims that the film-maker was arrested at his home on Monday night, together with his wife, daughter and 15 dinner guests. Security forces allegedly searched the house and seized belongings….
