Early this week, Isa Kalantari, the director of Iran’s Department of Environment, called the continuation of “environmental schools” illegal, cancelling their licenses and preventing them from continuing operation. Since last year in fact, half of these environmental schools have
been closed by the Islamic government and permits for opening new schools, granted in the past, have also been revoked.
Kalantari has stated the reason for the suspension of these schools as “religious” or due to a lack of religious teachings or for connections to the Tudeh Party.1 Nature or environmental schools were centers that had nothing to do with the Tudeh Party,
working solely to educate children and adolescents about life skills and to familiarize them with environmental issues. These schools, which started operation in 2014, were founded by Dr. Abdolhossein Vahabzadeh, along with a number of other Iranian environmental experts and activists who cared deeply about environmental issues. Dr. Vahabzadeh is a prominent Iranian environmental scientist who completed his studies in environmental sciences at U.S. universities and has been teaching for the last 40 years.
Families agreeable to the establishment of these schools alongside interest from students to learn more about the environment and to become more environmentally friendly have led to the establishment of more than 90 “nature schools” in various provinces of Iran within the last three years.
It is clear that the popularity of these nature schools has angered the Friday Prayer Imams and other religious authorities. In these schools, compulsory religious studies which have been the hallmark of public and private education in Iran for the last 40 years were not taught. Children and adolescents spent their time learning about nature and the environment instead of going to mosques and listening to boring religious lessons.
At the same time, it should be noted that 2017 marked the culmination of an onslaught by the ruling regime on environmentalists, through the death of prominent figures like Dr. Kavous Seyed-Emami in prison in 2018, as well as the imprisonment and torture of hundreds of environmental experts, some of whom continue their work and activities while in prison.
In fact, 2017 has been the year in which the role that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the military play in attacking Iranian environmentalists and preventing their efforts has been revealed. This is most likely due to the fact that the government’s illegal nuclear operations could be exposed.

(1) The Tudeh Party was the name of the pro-Soviet communists who began their activity in Iran in 1941. The party was outlawed before the Islamic Revolution (1979); however, during the revolution it re-emerged. Unlike other socialist groups that were initially
separated from Muslim revolutionaries, whose members were mostly arrested by the
government and frequently sentenced to death, the Tudeh party had the full support of
the Islamic State. In fact, they worked closely with the government, advising and guiding
them on different issues, until they were also disbanded and announced illegal in early
1981.
August 17, 2019

The original idea for a day of friendship came from Hallmark cards in the 1930’s. Originally celebrated on 2nd August, the day was largely viewed cynically by the public as a money making exercise, sales of friendship day cards did not take off in Europe and by the mid-1940’s the day had faded into obscurity in the USA. The idea of a day to honour friendship was, however, adopted by a number of countries in Asia where it remained a popular custom to reserve a day for celebrating friendships and the exchange of gifts between friends.

World Friendship Day was proposed for 30 July 1958 by the World Friendship Crusade, an international civil organisation that campaigns to foster a culture of peace through friendship. Many years later, in 2011, the 30th July was declared as the International Day of Friendship by the General Assembly of United Nations.

World Friendship day and International Day of Friendshiponline as well as with community activities in local communities aimed at bringing those of different backgrounds together.

In 2018, the United Nation’s Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) inscribed 20 new sites to its World Heritage List. However, early this month, July 2019, more sites were added to the list. UNESCO added 29 more to the list of global landmarks deemed to have “outstanding universal value”.
Now places like Vatnajökull National Park in Iceland and Jaipur City in Rajasthan, India, are on the list of global cultural and natural sites that includes such famous destinations as the Palace of Versailles in France and Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.
UNESCO held its 43rd World Heritage Committee session in Baku, Azerbaijan, from June 30 to July 10 this year. During the conference, representatives from 21 member states approved a list of 29 sites, which were nominated by their countries. Each site added must meet at least one of 10 criteria, such as containing superlative natural phenomena, representing a masterpiece of human creative genius, or a unique cultural tradition.
Here are some examples:
The picturesque hills of Italy’s prosecco sparkling wine region in Valdobbiadene
About 40 miles north of Venice, Italy’s prosecco production area in the hills of Conegliano and Valdobbiadene is the second wine region in the country to be recognized by UNESCO. (Piedmont was added to the list in 2014.) It is also officially Italy’s 55th site on the list, tying it with China as the country with the most UNESCO World Heritage sites. Since the 17th century, wine producers have grown grapes for sparkling wine on the area’s rugged hills in small plots of vines on narrow terraces—known as ciglioni—giving the region a unique and picturesque look.

Another site is Bagan, Myanmar, where Buddhist monks walk around the sacred Shwezigon Paya, a pagoda in Bagan. From temples and stupas to archaeological remains and sculptures, this landscape of monumental Buddhist architecture in the central plain of Myanmar is only the second location in the country to be added to the World Heritage List. (UNESCO inscribed the Pyu Ancient Cities, the remains of three walled cities in the Ayeyarwady River basin, in 2014.) Created from a variety of materials
including stone, brick, and the gleaming gold of the Shwezigon Pagoda, the area’s  emples show the range that the Bagan civilization was able to build when it was at its peak between the 11th and 13th centuries.
If you are looking for a site closer to home, the 20th-Century Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, in the United States is among the new additions. Fallingwater house is one of eight Frank Lloyd Wright buildings that were added as a group to the World Heritage List. In fact, the recent addition of eight Frank Lloyd Wright buildings to the World Heritage List marks the first time UNESCO has recognized modern U.S. architecture. Scattered across the United States from the Guggenheim Museum in New York City to Hollyhock House in Los Angeles and Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona, these eight sites represent some of Wright’s most important contributions to 20th-century architecture.

Here are the rest of UNESCO’s confirmed 2019 World Heritage Sites, organized by region:
Africa
Ancient Ferrous Metallurgy Sites of Burkina Faso, Burkina Faso

Asia
Korean Neo-Confucian Academies, Korea
Archaeological Ruins of Liangzhu City, China
Migratory Bird Sanctuaries along the Coast of Yellow Sea–Gulf of Bohai, China
Megalithic Jar Sites in Xiengkhuang–Plain of Jars, Laos
Mozu-Furuichi Kofun Group: Mounded Tombs of Ancient Japan, Japan
Ombilin Coal Mining Heritage of Sawahlunto, Indonesia
Australia/Oceania
Budj Bim Cultural Landscape, Australia
Jaipur City, Rajasthan, India

Europe
Royal Buildings of Mafra, Portugal
Sanctuary of Bom Jesus do Monte in Braga, Portugal
Churches of the Pskov School of Architecture, Russia
Erzgebirge/Krušnohoří Mining Region, Czechia/Germany
French Austral Lands and Seas, France
A visitor to an ice cave in Vatnajökull National Park
Historic Centre of Sheki with the Khan’s Palace, Azerbaijan
Jodrell Bank Observatory, United Kingdom
Krzemionki Prehistoric Striped Flint Mining Region, Poland
Landscape for Breeding and Training of Ceremonial Carriage Horses at Kladruby and Labem, Czechia
Risco Caido and the Sacred Mountains of Gran Canaria Cultural Landscape, Spain
Water Management System of Augsburg, Germany

Middle East
Babylon, Iraq
Dilmun Burial Mounds, Bahrain
Hyrcanian Forests, Iran
North America
Writing-on-Stone / Áísínai’pi, Canada

South America
Paraty and Ilha Grande, Brazil

The Tropics are a region of the Earth, roughly defined as the area between the tropic of Cancer and the tropic of Capricorn. Although topography and other factors contribute to
climatic variation, tropical locations are typically warm and experience little seasonal change in day-to-day temperature. An important feature of the Tropics is the prevalence of rain in the moist inner regions near the equator, and that the seasonality of rainfall increases with the distance from the equator. The Tropics account for 40 per cent of the world’s total surface area and are host to approximately 80 per cent of the world’s biodiversity and much of its language and cultural diversity. The tropical region faces a number of challenges such as climate change, deforestation, logging, urbanisation and demographic changes.
Background
The United Nations General Assembly adopted resolution A/RES/70/267 on 14 June
2016, which declared that 29 June of each year is to be observed as the International Day
of the Tropics. Tropical nations have made significant progress, but face a variety of challenges that demand focused attention across a range of development indicators and data in order to achieve sustainable development.
The international Day of the Tropics was designated to raise awareness to the specific
challenges faced by tropical areas, the far-reaching implications of the issues affecting
the world’s tropical zone and the need, at all levels, to raise awareness and to underline
the important role that countries in the tropics will play in achieving the Sustainable
Development Goals .