The loan will provide an incentive to set up bookshops.

TEHRAN, March 11--Culture and Islamic Guidance Ministry will allocate a 60-billion-rial loan for the construction of bookshops in Tehran once the plan undergoes expert studies and the ministry’s cultural department approves of it, reported CHN.
Other aspects of the plan are collaboration between the ministry and Tehran Municipality to make low-priced land available for the purpose.
The Office for Book Planning and Promotion is currently working on a plan based on which special funds will be allocated for establishing bookshops in different parts of Tehran.
According to this plan, 60 billion rials will be allocated for establishing 200 bookshops (30 bookshops with areas of 1,000 square meters, 60 bookshops with areas of 150 square meters and 110 bookshops with areas of 50 square meters).
If the plan is approved, applicants will be given loans of 1.5 million rials per square meter with profit rate of 15 percent.
Meanwhile, managing director of ’Cultural Society for Children and Young Adults Publishers’ said owners of bookshops are usually among the low-income strata of the society.
Mohammad Reza Rahimnia noted that the loan will provide an incentive for the people to set up bookshops.
“Factors that dissuade people from establishing bookshops are high prices of commercial properties, 30 percent insurance premium for bookshop employees, water and electricity bills and the numerous taxes levied on bookshops,“ he added.
Rahimnia noted that Tehran Municipality can help bookshop owners to a considerable extent by reducing their expenses.
Head of the Board of Directors of Publishers and Bookshop Owners Association, Davoud Ramazanzadeh, was also present at a meeting held in the Office for Book Planning and Promotion last week.

TEHRAN, March 11--A noted Iranian writer said that wars are the greatest source of information which can be used in research works and human sciences.
Speaking to Fars News Agency on the sidelines of the first congress on Resistance Literature, Ahmad Dehqan added that great social developments, including wars and revolutions, have always been rich in diverse subjects for study.
“Such social developments have given rise to a large number of human sciences or even made them more prolific,“ he noted.
For example, psychology emerged as an important course of study at the university following World War II when research studies were conducted on those active in combat operations, he said.
“If wars are excluded from literatures, many of the great literary works will be eliminated,“ he said, citing ’War and Peace’, ’Farewell to Arms’ and ’Red and Black’ as examples.
Dehqan further stated that the Iraq-imposed war on Iran (1980-1988) has several important features, which can be focused on.
Firstly, the war was a protracted struggle and studies on the fighters involved in the war will be of greater significance, he said.
This war is one of the greatest religious conflicts in the world in which one of the parties entered the war under a completely religious attitude.
Since the current era is the era of social researches, this war is of special importance, he said.
Dehqan further said that the wars have usually one beginning and an end historically, but the impacts of wars may make the effects last longer.
He criticized the universities for not focusing on the Iraq-imposed war and said that dissertations on this are quite rare.

TEHRAN, March 11--Iran ranks tenth in the world in symbolic printing diversity which is confirmed by the international cultural body UNESCO.
Announcing this, deputy head of the Union for Printing House Owners Mohammad Belali told ISNA on the sidelines of New Books Exhibition in Eslamshahr, Tehran province, that the union has for the first time exported one million volumes of books to Iraq.
“Some 3,000 printing houses are now operating in Tehran,“ he recalled, adding that most of the units are on the verge of bankruptcy due to the imbalance in supply and demand.
Noting that the public do not show any interest in buying expensive books, Belali stated that lack of financial support, high bank rates, procurement of raw materials and equipment are among the problems facing those involved in the sector.
Stating that some 36,000 titles of books are published in the country each year, he said that 183 million volumes of textbooks and 6,000 titles of university textbooks are also published annually.
Religious books have the highest sales, he said.
Meanwhile, deputy head of the Union for Printing House Owners announced that a so-called ’printing city’ will be set up in Dubai to attract Iranian customers.
The project will receive some 500 million dirhams of government support as well as investments by the Iranians, he noted.
At the same gathering, head of Eslamshahr Culture and Islamic Guidance Department stressed the need to promote the culture of book reading in the society and said that lack of awareness about the recently-published books will create a vacuum in meeting the needs of the society.

Fereydoun Shahbazian

TEHRAN, March 11--Prominent composer Fereydoun Shahbazian has expressed deep concerns about the quality of pop music being aired by the national broadcaster, Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB).
He said that the quality of film music is also poor and the board of music composers affiliated to Iran Cinema House can do nothing to oblige the filmmakers to use standardized music.
“Every filmmaker asks his/her friends who has slight knowledge about music to compose a song for the film which they usually mix at the end of the film. It is surprising that the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance does not enforce specific criteria to support professional musicians and stop the current chaos in the domain of national and pop music.“
Shahbazian, who is a proponent of broadcasting pop music on national television, further called for supporting the intellectual rights of the musicians and said, “When I spend part of my life to acquiring professional skills to compose music, I should be entitled to protect my song from piracy and the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance is expected to support my rights.“
He criticized directors of certain TV serials for broadcasting songs recorded in their own voice at the beginning or the end of each program and said that they are not competent to do so, but are self-satisfied and think that what they are doing is right.
He appealed to the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance to take experts views into account in developing music to meet the public demand and put and end to the current chaos in field of music.

TEHRAN, March 11--After discovering evidence of some plant and animal species (in form of carbonized seeds) during their first season of excavations in the ancient sites of ’Kalateh Khan’ and ’Qafkhaneh’ located in Shahrood Plain in Semnan province, archeologists are studying to achieve more understanding of the condition of nutrition habits and lifestyle of people during the Neolithic Age.
The antiquity of the two sites of ’Kalateh Khan’ and ’Qafkhaneh’ dates back to the 7th and 8th millennia BC respectively and they are among the oldest sites of Iran’s Central Plateau.
On the details of first season of archeological excavations in the region, Kourosh Roustaei, head of excavation team in the sites of ’Kalateh Khan’ and ’Qafkhaneh’ said, “During this season of excavations which began one month ago and will probably take one more month, a great number of soundings are being carried out to support the hypotheses about the ’Cheshmeh Ali Era’ which is one of the oldest ages of civilization in Iran’s Central Plateau.“
Roustaei considered the discovery of carbonized plant seeds and animal bones as the most important achievements of this season of excavation in these sites and added, “With the study of these evidence, we can attain some valuable information on the condition of nutrition and lifestyle of the people at that time and also about the plants and animals during the Neolithic Age.“
There is a possibility to discover some architectural objects from these sites during the later excavations, the archeologist said adding, “Excavation operation is currently being carried out in a site measuring 2m by 2m, but with the beginning of the next excavation seasons, the excavations will be conducted over a wider area.“
According to Roustaei, the evidence obtained will be transferred to Tehran for further studies after the end of the first season of excavation in these sites.

LONDON, March 11--The double-sided sheet written 39 years ago had been expected to fetch £1.5 million in sealed bids at Bonhams in New York, but the offers failed to meet the reserve, BBC reported.
Lennon wrote the song after reading about the death of his friend, Guinness heir Tara Browne, in the Daily Mail.
It became the final track on the Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album and was sold for £56,600 in 1992.
A Bonhams spokesman said: “It’s a reality in our business but we’re certainly disappointed.“
He added: “We wish we were jumping on the rooftops yelling about the sales prices.“