Veteran Iranian taekwondo fighter Hadi Saei has claimed Beijing Olympics men’s welterweight gold medal by beating Italy’s Mauro Sarmiento.
In the Friday men’s -80kg final, the Iranian world and Olympic champion beat the European bronze medalist to win his second Olympic taekwondo gold medal and Iran’s first gold medal in the Beijing Olympic Games.

Saei, who stepped up to welterweight after winning the -68kg Olympic gold in Athens, lost the first round 4-2 after the 6-foot-5-inches Sarmiento stunned the Iranian with a two-point axe kick to the head.

Saei battled back in the second round and managed to tie the score at 4-4 with roundhouse kicks to his opponents left side.
The 32-year-old Saei attacked first in the third round to score two points and secure a 6-4 victory in a stunning-comeback fashion.

Sarmiento, who had earlier defeated American champion Steven Lopez in the quarterfinals, raised Saei’s hand to congratulate the veteran.
The four-time world champion Lopez and China’s Zhu Guo, who was earlier beaten by Saei, each captured a bronze medal.

“Iran’s Karate house” is planned to host the 9th Iranian presidential Karate cup at August 21st with 22 participating countries.
The number of participating countries has been increased six-fold in compare with the 8th cup which has been held in Tehran, the mega capital of Islamic Republic of Iran.
The contributing nations are Armenia, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Russia, Netherlands, France, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey, Japan, Nigeria, Kuwait, Bangladesh, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Malaysia, Kazakhstan and Syria and Iran as well.
The first title winners will be prized with 3000 dollars, the second title winners will receive a 2000 dollars award and the 3rd placeholders will be granted 1000 dollars.
Iran is one of the candidates for hosting the next years’ Karate world cup and the presidential cup would be a proper and considerable arena to show the hosting capabilities of Iran and attract the attention of International Karate Federation.

OhMyNews - Kourosh Ziabari: In November 2007, Yahoo attempted to remove Iran from the list of countries it supported on its signup page and ban Iranian users from creating new accounts using the pretext that the United States had imposed sanctions on the country.

It did this even though it had already been announced officially that US exports to Iran had increased tenfold despite the sanctions imposed under President Bush.

Many journalists and experts believe that the issue of Iran sanctions is more media propaganda than practical solution. Statistics for 2008 show that Iran is currently the largest economic partner in the Persian Gulf region of France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Portugal and Australia. Iran is also the fourth largest economic ally in Asia of Netherlands, Denmark and the United Kingdom — following South Korea, China and Japan.

After the removal of Iran’s name, waves of protest ensued in Iran and among Iranians residing in other countries.

The first step was debuting a Google bomb called “Hello Yahoo mail” with the aim of introducing Iran to global opinions, Internet users and Yahoo directors.

A young Iranian cyber activist, Mohammad Tavakoli, established Helloyahoomail.net with the slogan “Culture is our weapon, the weak impose sanctions,” calling for international attention on the 7,500-year history of Persian culture and civilization.

The main goal of this Google bomb, which targeted the “Yahoo mail” keyword, was to provide users searching for “Yahoo mail” in search engines with some unbiased and realistic information on Iran and its people, culture, arts, sciences and history so as to express that Yahoo was quarrelling with an ancient and peacemaking nation.

The Web site interviewed many outstanding personalities, including university professors and political figures, regarding the issue, and all condemned Yahoo.

“Hello Yahoo mail” also commenced a national movement in order to encourage existing Iranian users of Yahoo to remove their accounts from the site.

It is estimated that five million Iranian users of Yahoo removed their accounts from the Yahoo database after this national call. This called huge damage to the international credit of Yahoo.

Anyhow, Yahoo mail once again included Iran in its list of supported countries three days ago, without any announcement or apologizes.

It is not clear why Yahoo removed the name of Iran unexpectedly and why it was added again, but it is clear that “Hello Yahoo mail” was a simple reflection of Persian talent and power.

The cyber influence of Iranian bloggers, journalists and activists lead to an unforgettable failure for Yahoo and proved that hostility, atrocity and animosity are not proper ways for dealing with ancient nations and civilizations.

The ability to launch satellites into orbit indicates progress in the Islamic republic’s missile technology.
In February Tehran successfully launched the Explorer-1 research rocket, which is reportedly capable of carrying a satellite into orbit, and unveiled the country’s first domestically built satellite, named Omid, or Hope.

“President (Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad was at the launch of the carrier from Iran’s space station,” government spokesman Gholamhossein Elham said.
President Ahmadinejad termed the launching a great technological achievement for the Iranian nation.

Iran has said it wants to put its own satellites into orbit to monitor natural disasters in the earthquake-prone nation and improve its telecommunications.
Iran has long held a goal of developing a space program. It hopes to launch four more satellites by 2010, the government has said.
In 2005, it launched its first commercial satellite on a Russian rocket in a joint project with Moscow, which appears to be the main partner in transferring space technology to Iran.