The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has just published a statement for immediate press release concerning the escalation of extreme measures taken by Iran's government against its religious minorities. Additionally the Commission has released its 2008 Annual Report with Iran being listed under "Countries of Particular Concern," and Egypt listed under "Watch List Countries."

On Wednesday Shahabnews.com, an organ of the Islamic Republic of Iran which prides itself on being a mixture of fundamentalism and reformism, announced that a petition would be circulated at Friday prayers today in Tehran calling for the dissolution of the Bahá’í administration.

Nelson Évora, photo by caboindex from flickr

Nelson Evora, a Bahá’í from Portugal, has won the gold medal for the triple jump at the Beijing Olympics. He had previously won the triple jump World Champion title at the athletics world championships in Osaka in August 2007.

Screen shot of the news article

Payvand's Iran News has recently published an extensive article on the progress of the feature film, Mona's Dream.

As to the genesis of the film project, the article states the following:

The US Congress will be voting soon on resolution H. Res. 1303 calling on the Egyptian Government to respect human rights and freedoms of religion and expression in Egypt.

The resolution, sponsored by Rep. Frank Wolf [R-VA] and cosponsored by several other congressmen, was submitted to the US House of Representatives and referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs on June 24, 2008.

Pre-2004 ID card with "other" on it

Today, a Cairo court (Administrative Court, First Degree, District-7) heard a challenge to the court ruling of 29 January 2008 allowing the Baha'is of Egypt to obtain ID cards and birth certificate with dashes "--" or "other" entered for religious classification in these documents.

International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) has just issued an urgent press release regarding the detained Baha'i leaders in Iran.

The ICJ is an international non-governmental organisation comprising sixty of the world's most eminent jurists and has a worldwide network of national sections and affiliated organisations.

The Illinois Bureau of Tourism asked the state's residents and visitors to nominate their favorite destinations in Illinois. In May of 2007, seven of these were selected as the Seven Wonders of Illinois.

You may watch Cairo's TV program which was referred to in the previous post regarding the Egyptian Baha'i student (Kholoud), who was ultimately allowed to sit for her high school final exams. The program's title is "the Egyptian Street."

As the Baha'is of the world celebrate today the end of their yearly "fast" and the advent of their new year, the case of Kholoud, the young Egyptian student who was--because of belonging to the Baha'i religion--prevented from registering for her exams by the head of "Examination Control" in Cairo, captured the outrage of the Ministry of Education as well as the public opinion in Egypt.