In the United States of America a plot has been acquired in the precincts of the Mother Temple of the West to serve as the site for the construction of a Home for the Aged, and which will constitute the first of the Dependencies to be erected around that holiest Bahá’í House of Worship. Measures have been adopted, and the design authorized, for the completion of the landscaping of the area surrounding that same building. The National Bahá’í Publishing Committee has been converted into a Bahá’í Publishing Trust, functioning under the jurisdiction of the American National Spiritual Assembly. The total number of American Indian tribes with which contact has been established has now reached twenty-two, whilst members of the Apache, the Cherokee, the Omaha, the Oneida, and the Sioux tribes have been enrolled in the American Bahá’í Community. The number of territories, federal districts and states of the United States of America where official authorization for the conduct of Bahá’í marriages has been granted is now twenty-one, whilst the number of localities in that same country where the Bahá’í Holy Days are officially recognized is over twenty-five. PROPERTIES ACQUIRED AROUND THE WORLD Land for no less than eight of eleven Temple sites to be acquired according to the provisions of the Ten-Year Plan, and involving an expenditure of eighty thousand dollars has been purchased in the following places: in the holy city of Ba_gh_dád, on the banks of the Tigris, blessed by the footsteps of Bahá’u’lláh, of an area of thirty thousand square meters; on the banks of the Nile in Cairo, the center of both the Arab and Islamic worlds, of an area of seventeen thousand square meters; in Frankfurt, the heart of the European continent, of an area of seventeen thousand square meters; in New Delhi, the capital of India, of an area of sixty-six thousand square meters; in Sydney, the oldest Bahá’í center in the Australian continent, of an area of eleven thousand square meters; in Kampala, in the heart of the African continent, of an area of twenty-four thousand square meters; in Johannesburg, the second largest city in the African continent, of an area of six thousand square meters; and in Panama City, the importance of which has been underlined by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in the Tablets of the Divine Plan, of an area of twenty thousand square meters.