UNICEF to print textbook for Iraqis in Iran

Tehran,

The Director of Information of the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) has announced here that his organization will print here schools books for Iraqi children, which would then be dispatched to that country in two lots. He said this would encourage Iraqi children to go back to school. Hameed Marshai said that so far five million books have been sent to Iraq, to be distributed to 18 administrative divisions there.

Taken From: http://www.islamicnews.org/english/en_daily.html

Mauritania President Seeks Re-Election

NOUAKCHOTT, Mauritania

Women in swirling orange robes and men in sky-blue caftans poured into polling stations across this desert country Friday for elections that pitted a Western-allied ruler against the candidate of Islamic hard-liners.

The leading contenders — President Maaoya Sid'Ahmed Ould Taya, and Mohamed Khouna Ould Haidalla, the former military dictator Taya overthrew in a coup 19 years ago — each accused the other of plotting to steal the vote by fraud or force.

"We're calling on all our supporters to stay vigilant," Haidalla declared, casting his ballot hours after being abruptly arrested, then released, by government security.

Mauritania, an Arab-dominated nation straddling the Arab and African worlds on the edge of the Sahara, has yet to experience a peaceful transfer of power in 43 years of independence from France.

Taken From: http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20031107/ap_on_re_af/mauritania_elections_6

Married women turning to self-immolation in Tajikistan

DUSHANBE

When daily quarrels with her husband became too much to bear for Raikhon, the 28-year-old Tajik woman drenched herself in petrol and struck a match, killing herself before the horrified eyes of her family.

Her husband Nurullo tried to put out the flames, but Raikhon died after receiving burns to 95 percent of her body.

In a tragic return to a grisly tradition, women in this impoverished Central Asian republic are committing suicide through self-immolation - a phenomenon, Tajik prosecutors say, that has been spreading in the former Soviet Unionْs poorest republic over recent years.

ôSome 40 women of different ages committed suicide through self-immolation over the past 20 months,¤ using whatever inflammatory materials come to hand, said an official in the prosecutor generalْs office.

Taken From: http://66.234.3.46/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/todaysfeatures/2003/November/todaysfeatures_November15.xml&section=todaysfeatures