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Iranian Students Lashed 99 Times Over Coed Party

 TEHRAN — More than 30 college students were arrested, interrogated and within 24 hours were each given 99 lashes for attending a graduation party that included men and women, Iran’s judiciary has announced. 

The Qazvin prosecutor, Esmail Sadeghi Niaraki, described the women as “half naked,” meaning they were not wearing Islamic coverings, scarves and long coats. They were arrested while “dancing and jubilating” after the authorities received a report that a party attended both by men and women was being held in a villa on the outskirts of Qazvin.

Mixed-gender parties, dancing and the consumption of alcohol are illegal in Iran, although they have become common over the past decade, especially in cities. The raids were carried out over a 48-hour period, after the authorities monitored for several weeks 58 homes in which single people were believed to be living. 

Mixing between genders is severely restricted and Mr Niaraki said the case “once again required a firm response by the judiciary in quickly reviewing and implementing the law. We hope this will be a lesson for those who break Islamic norms in private places”.

Additionally, last week eight people were arrested because they were involved in online modeling without their headscarves, and a former model was questioned on television. A blogger was arrested, and prominent actors and actresses, who have huge social media followings in Iran, were given warnings about adhering to Islamic dress code and “Islamic behavior.” 

Mr Niaraki added that the judiciary would not tolerate “lawbreakers who use excuses such as freedom and having fun in birthday parties and graduation ceremonies”.

He warned that being arrested for attending mixed-gender parties could “create problems for their future education and employment”.

Iran has continued to be accused of widespread human rights abuses despite the lifting of sanctions against the regime by the West in exchange for halting its nuclear program. 

Since President Rouhani came to power in 2013, he has presided over the execution of more than 1,800 people as well as public beatings, flogging and amputations, according to human rights groups.

edited from The Independent

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More and more Americans like watching people kick round balls

DESPITE its name, the Copa America has never been played north of the Rio Grande before. 

On June 3rd the international soccer tournament kicks off in Santa Clara, California. Games will take place in ten cities across the country over the next four weeks. It is the latest effort to cement the sport into the mainstream consciousness. Soccer still lags behind America’s four leading sports: baseball, basketball, hockey and American football. But several measures suggest that the game is gaining ground.

Much of the hard running took place in the 1990s, when the successful hosting of the World Cup coincided with a surge of young players and the formation of Major League Soccer (MLS). According to a poll for ESPN, soccer has become the second-most popular sport for 12-24 year olds, after American football, and is the standout leader among Hispanics of the same age. Last year soccer-playing among boys in high school grew more than any other sport, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations.

The success of the national teams, in particular the women’s side, has been a boon. Last year, the Women’s World Cup final attracted a domestic TV audience of 27m.  There is now more live soccer available on American TV than in any other country.

When it comes to revenue, soccer generates just half the revenue of Japanese baseball and a tenth of what the NBA does.

The United Soccer League, or USL, will grow from 20 to 24 teams over the next two seasons. It has one of the youngest fan bases of all American sports—52% of MLS fans are aged 18-34, the highest proportion of any professional sports league.

TV audiences are growing (tying domestic fixtures in with English Premier League games, which attract larger audiences, has worked well) and networks see the potential, signing a $90m-a-year deal to 2022 for broadcasting rights.

 Still, MLS has still not fully dispelled its image as a retirement home for European stars. Only Sebastian Giovinco, a player for Toronto FC, can be considered a foreign star in his prime. With a new surge of spending on soccer in China, it may become even more difficult to attract stars. America has more world-beating athletes than any other country, but none of them play soccer. Yet.

edited from The Economist

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Price rise in Japan

TOKYO — One of the most talked-about television commercials in Japan this year advertises an unusual product: apology. The company’s transgression? Increasing the price of Garigari-kun, a hugely popular ice cream bar.  

The ad shows a group of 100 workers and executives from Akagi Nyugyo  ice cream company lined up in neat rows in front of their suburban Tokyo factory. As gentle folk music plays, they bow in apology. The text on the screen says “We held on for 25 years, but……” followed by “60→ 70” referring to the rise in price of the bars from 60 to 70 yen (74 to 86 cents).

Akagi last increased prices a quarter of a century ago, and it debated the recent rise for seven or eight years, said Fumio Hagiwara, one of the marketing executive at the maker of the ice cream bar. The rising cost of raw materials finally forced Akagi’s hand. Tighter logging restrictions in China, for instance, meant it had to use more expensive Russian lumber for ice cream sticks.

In stronger economic circumstances, Akagi’s price increase would not stand out. Companies in other places routinely pass on higher costs to consumers. But in Japan, businesses that face rising costs feel they have less ability to do so because wages are flat. Instead, they take a hit to their profits or cut back rather than alienate consumers.

Increasing prices are a big deal in Japan. The country’s sluggish economy means that the cost of most things has not risen in 20 years, and almost any increase makes headlines.

Consumer prices are a painful economic headache for Japan.  Japan’s economy, which has been oscillating between growth and contraction for years, picked up speed in the first quarter, according to government data released on Wednesday.

But the price increases that go through — like the cost of the Garigari-kun ice cream bar rising to ¥70, from ¥60 — do not reflect a more vibrant economy or a stronger consumer. They usually mean a company is facing higher costs cutting into its profit. The deflationary trends are still firmly in place. And wages are under more pressure than prices, so buying power for most Japanese has declined compared with a generation ago.

In the ice cream business, Akagi estimates that Garigari-kun’s sales volume will drop by 7 percent as a result of raising prices. The sales hit, the company believes, will be more than counterbalanced by the higher price.

It appears that for Akagi, at least, an apology is an effective way to deal with the pain. “We figure it will take another year before we know how consumers really take to it,” Mr Hagiwara said.

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Do it in Catalan or pay the fine

WHEN a severe-looking lady walked into his real estate agency in Barcelona, Angel Centeno knew she had no interest in buying a house. Instead, she waved a piece of paper and informed Mr Centeno he had been fined €1,000 ($1,130). Why? The 66-year-old businessman, born and raised in Barcelona, had broken Catalonia’s most notorious consumer law: his company sign appeared only in Spanish.

Mr Centeno is not the only one to receive this unpleasant surprise from Catalonia’s regional government, the Generalitat. The consumer code’s requirement – more than a decade old - sets forth that businesses must publish all public information “at least in Catalan”. Those who insist on writing signs, menus or catalogues only in Spanish can be fined anywhere from hundreds to thousands of euros, depending on company size or the quantity of untranslated language. Rafael Moreno, a furniture retailer who owes €1,260 worth of fines, fears the government will seize the sum from his bank account. But replacing the three-meter Spanish logo at one of his shops with one in Catalan could cost him €18,000.

Civic groups and liberal opposition politicians are increasingly alarmed. As the government’s desire to secede from Spain grows, so does its determination to enforce Catalan as the region’s only official language. The multas linguisticas, as the fines are known in Spanish, are rising. In 2014, 57 businesses were fined a total of €51,300. In 2015 the number of businesses rose to 68, and the sum trebled. So far this year nearly a hundred companies have been sanctioned.

A few years ago a patriotic librarian, Roger Seuba, denounced 5,000 companies. Business owners say other citizens take the law into their own hands, smashing shop windows or spray-painting their façades.

The Spanish and Catalan languages enjoy co-official status in the region. When reviewing Catalonia’s independence status in 2010, the Constitutional Court of Spain ruled that imposing either language on private enterprises violates the constitution. Yet fines kept being imposed.

Montserrat Ribera, the director of Catalonia’s consumer agency, explains language fines enshrine the fundamental right of Catalan consumers to be served in their own tongue and they are necessary to help preserve the language. However, not everybody agrees. The regional branch of the conservative Popular Party says the language fines violate freedom of expression.

After the fine, Mr Centeno refuses to speak in his mother tongue. He demands that all government documents sent to his mailbox be written in Spanish.

edited from The Economist

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Budweisser will rebrand its US cans

The beer will change its name to "America" from May to November. Budweisser wants Americans to focus on events like the US election, summer Olympics, and Copa America Centenario.

This is not the first time Brazilian-run, Belgium-based parent company, Anheuser-Busch InBev, has redesigned its labels. It has run pictures of the Statue of Liberty and the American flag on Budweiser's labels in previous summer promotions.

The company has also launched targeted marketing campaigns in other regions. Budweiser bottles were redesigned for New Year in China and linked to football and music events in the UK.

The Belgian-Brazilian company controls nearly 25% of the world's beer market. North America is its most profitable market.

Beer sales typically spike between the end of May and the beginning of September and AB-InBev's hope is that Budweiser new labeling will attract even more American consumers.

US Budweiser was created in St. Louis, Missouri in 1876. Due to a trademark battle, Ab-Inbev has to market the beer as "Bud" in many countries in the European Union, excluding Ireland, the UK and Spain. 

The Czech beer-maker Budweiser Budvar Brewery controls the name in the other EU countries.

    edited from BBC

Labor Law Changes in France (audio)

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Thai island is closed indefinetely

Thai and foreign tourists will not be able to access Koh Tachai, located in the Similan National Park in the Andaman Sea. 

Every year Thai marine national parks are closed to visitors from May to October during the monsoon season, but Koh Tachai will not reopen with the others. It will be closed to visitors indefinitely to protect the environment.

“Thanks to its beauty, Koh Tachai is a popular tourist site for both Thai and foreign tourists. This has resulted in overcrowding and the degradation of natural resources and the environment, We have to close it to allow the rehabilitation of the environment both on the island and in the sea without being disturbed by tourism activities before the damage is beyond repair. But, anyway, two dive sites in the area will remain open, ” Tunya Netithammakul, director of the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plants Conservation told the Bangkok Post.

Thon Thamrongnawasawat, deputy dean of the Faculty of Fisheries of Kasetsart University, told the newspaper that there were sometimes well over 1,000 tourists on a beach on Koh Tachai that could hold up to 70 people, as well as tour boats and food stalls.

“This caused the island to quickly deteriorate. If it's not closed now, we'll lose Koh Tachai permanently," he said.

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edited from USA Today

2016 survey of small-business owners (video)

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Is stealing food a crime?

Roman Ostriakov, a homeless man who stole €4.07 ($4.50) worth of cheese and sausage, is not a thief, Italy’s highest court of appeal ruled Monday.

The Supreme Court of Cassation threw out Mr. Ostriakov’s theft conviction after a trial court sentenced him to six months in jail and a €100 ($115) fine in February 2015. The Ukrainian native and his lawyers only sought a more lenient sentence because he was unable to pay the hefty fine.

But the court went even further, ruling that Ostriakov’s action in 2011 “does not constitute a crime” because he stole a small amount of food out of desperation. 

 “The condition of the accused and the circumstances in which he obtained the merchandise show that he took the little amount of food he needed to overcome his immediate hunger,” the court ruled in a statement. “People should not be punished if, forced by need, they steal small quantities of food in order to meet the basic requirement of feeding themselves.”

Supporters of the ruling hope Ostriakov’s case will shed light on the extreme poverty and homelessness in Italy. 

In 2015, more than 1 in 4 Italians lived at or near the poverty leve, as unemployment lingered around 13 percent, according to reports from the humanitarian organization Caritas Europa. In 2013, the statistics agency ISTAT told Reuters that relative poverty in Italy (defined as a family of two living on about $1,139 a month) was at 12.7 percent , the highest level since the agency began tracking the data in 1997. And according to the Corriere Della Sera newspaper, 615 Italians  are added “to the ranks of the poor” every day. 

This court ruling is in sharp contrast with the way many communities treat the hunger in the United States. As of 2014, 31 US cities restrict sharing food with the homeless. In Ft. Lauderdale, for example, a 90-year-old man who violated a citywide law against feeding the homeless faced 60 days in jail and a $500 fine.

Back in Italy, the La Stampa newspaper praised the ruling in a front page editorial: “The court’s decision reminds us all that in a civilized country no one should be allowed to die of hunger.” 

edited from CSMonitor

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Ivy League economist 'suspected of terrorism'

On Thursday evening, a 40-year-old man — with dark, curly hair, olive skin and an exotic foreign accent — boarded a plane. It was a regional jet making a short hop from Philadelphia to nearby Syracuse.

The curly-haired man scribbled on his notepad. His seatmate, a blond-haired, 30-something looked him over. He was wearing navy Diesel jeans and a red Lacoste sweater but something about him didn’t seem right to her.

She decided to try out some small talk.

Is Syracuse home? She asked.

No, he replied curtly.

 He appeared  too focused on the task at hand, those strange scribblings.

The woman began reading her book. Or pretending to read, anyway. Shortly after boarding had finished, she flagged down a flight attendant and handed that crew-member a note of her own.

Then the passengers waited, and waited, and waited for the flight to take off. After they’d sat on the tarmac for about half an hour, the flight attendant approached the female passenger again and asked if she now felt okay to fly, or if she was “too sick.”

I’m OK to fly, the woman responded.

American Airlines flight 3950 remained grounded, though.

Then, for unknown reasons, the plane turned around and headed back to the gate. The woman was soon escorted off the plane. On the intercom a crew member announced that there was paperwork to fill out, or fuel to refill, or some other flimsy excuse.

The wait continued.

Finally the pilot came by, and approached the real culprit behind the delay: that curly-haired foreign man. He was now escorted off the plane, too, and taken to meet an agent.

What do you know about your seatmate? The agent asked the foreign-sounding man.

Well, she acted a bit funny, he replied, but she didn’t seem visibly ill. Maybe, he thought, they wanted his help in piecing together what was wrong with her.

And then the big reveal: The woman wasn’t really sick at all. She had seen her seatmate’s cryptic notes, scrawled in a script she didn’t recognize. Maybe it was code, or some foreign lettering, possibly the details of a plot to destroy the dozens of innocent lives aboard American Airlines Flight 3950. She felt it her duty to alert the authorities just to be safe. The curly-haired man was, the agent informed him politely, suspected of terrorism.

The curly-haired man laughed.

He laughed because those scribbles weren’t Arabic, or another foreign language, or even some special secret terrorist code. They were math.

Yes, math. A differential equation, to be exact.

The suspected terrorist was Guido Menzio, a young but decorated Ivy League economist,  best known for his relatively technical work on search theory, which helped earn him a tenured associate professorship at the University of Pennsylvania as well as stints at Princeton and Stanford’s Hoover Institution.

He’s Italian, not Middle Eastern, or whatever heritage usually gets ethnically profiled on flights these days.

Menzio had been on the first leg of a connecting flight to Ontario, where he had to give a talk at Queen’s University.

Menzio showed the authorities his calculations and was allowed to return to his seat.

Soon after, the flight finally took off, more than two hours after its scheduled departure time for what would be just a 41-minute trip in the air, according to flight-tracking data.

The woman never reboarded to the flight.

Casey Norton, a spokesman for American Airlines said the woman had indeed initially told the crew she was sick, but when she deplaned she disclosed that the reason she was feeling ill was her concern about the behavior of her seatmate. At that time, she requested to be rebooked on another flight. The crew then called for security personnel, who interviewed Menzio and determined him not to be a “credible threat.” Norton was not allowed to give out her name for privacy reasons.

Whenever there are conflicts between passengers, Norton said, “we try to work with them peacefully to resolve it,” whether that means changing seat assignments or switching someone to take a different flight. When asked how often customers raise similar suspicions about fellow passengers that turn out to be unfounded, he said it happens “from time to time” but declined to provide details about frequency.

Menzio for his part says he was “treated respectfully throughout,” though he remains baffled and frustrated by a “broken system that does not collect information efficiently.” He is troubled by the ignorance of his fellow passenger, as well as “A security protocol that is too rigid–in the sense that once the whistle is blown everything stops without checks–and relies on the input of people who may be completely clueless. ”

Rising xenophobia, he suggested, may soon make things worse for people who happen to look a little other-ish.

The professor also shared another observation from his time at airports on Facebook. One couple approached him just weeks ago and asker for his autograph thinking he was Sean Lennon - John's son.

In this true parable of 2016 I see another worrisome lesson: That in America today, the only thing more terrifying than foreigners is…math.

Edited from The Washington Post

Trump and TyC Sports (video)

Donald Trump's comments on immigration have been replayed around the world.

In Mexico, current and former leaders tore into Trump, with former president Vicente Fox saying, "I'm not going to pay for that [expletive] wall!" 

In Saudi Arabia, Walid bin Talal, a member of the royal family, tweeted that Trump is "a disgrace not only to the GOP but to all America." 

In Britain, Prime Minister David Cameron called Trump's rhetoric "divisive, stupid and wrong.”

Then there's Argentina, where a television broadcaster just released this video.






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