The head of Iran’s football association said women in Iran would be allowed to watch football matches in stadiums in the future.
Until now, women in Iran have only been allowed in the stands on a few exceptions, most recently at the friendly match against Russia.
When and under what conditions Iranian women will be allowed to watch matches in stadiums was initially unclear.
“Fortunately, the country’s Security Council has approved this issue and set up a working group to decide on its implementation,” Iranian Football Federation chief Mehdi Taj said on the sidelines of an event.
The country’s arch-conservative clergy argued that women had no business in stadiums with fanatical male fans.
Under pressure from the world governing body FIFA, the ban has been somewhat relaxed in recent years.
Iran’s powerful Security Council, above the parliament, deals with defence issues and protecting the Islamic Revolution.
Its decisions are final after the religious leader approves them.
The Iranian government has said two actresses appearing unveiled in a picture will be charged to court.
The government said the ladies flouted Iran’s mandatory hijab law.
Katayoun Riahi, 61, posted her picture online without a veil while Pantea Bahram, 53, posed for a picture during film screening without a head covering.
These pictures went viral causing police to accuse them of “the crime of removing hijab in public and posting photos on the internet,” local media in Iran said.
The prosecution team said the actresses will likely pay fines or face jail term.
Recently, the government warned that new technology will be adopted and surveillance cameras will be used to track down women not wearing hijabs in public places.
According to Iran’s Islamic Penal Code; any act deemed “offensive” to public decency is punishable by 10 days to two months in prison or 74 lashes.
The law applies to girls and women from age nine who appear unveiled in public places.
Last year, a 22-year-old woman, Mahsa Amini died in morality police custody after she was arrested for not wearing a hijab.
This caused public outrage which led to many weeks of nationwide protests.
Women and girls who joined the protest were brutally attacked causing the death of Sarina Esmailzadeh, Nika Shakarami, Hadis Najafi, among others.
The Iranian government has introduced surveillance cameras to track women not wearing hijabs in public places as part of a new offensive against its female nationals.
The government created an animation to circulate the information across the country that cameras monitored by police authorities will be planted in public places.
Local media reported that police would monitor the cameras planted in public places and send text messages warning women who refused to comply with the mandatory hijab law.
The national police boss in Iran, Ahmad Reza Radan, announced that advanced technology, including street cameras, would identify women violating the mandatory hijab in “public places, cars or commercial centres.”
After the announcement, many women and girls in the country refused to abide by the mandatory hijab law.
According to Iran’s Islamic Penal Code, any act deemed “offensive” to public decency is punishable by 10 days to two months in prison or 74 lashes.
The law applies to girls and women from age nine who appear unveiled publicly.
Saudi Arabia and Iran announced Friday an agreement to resume relations in a joint statement inked by the two countries and China and carried by Saudi and Iranian state media.
The agreement was a result of talks in Beijing that began Monday, following an initiative from Chinese President Xi Jinping aimed at “developing good neighborly relations” between Iran and Saudi Arabia, the statement said.
China hosted and sponsored talks between the two countries following “a desire [from both] to resolve the disputes between them through dialogue and diplomacy within the framework of the fraternal ties that unite them.”
Saudi Arabia severed diplomatic relations with Iran in 2016 after the Saudi embassy in Tehran was attacked and burned by Iranian protesters, angered by the kingdom’s execution of prominent Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr Baqr al-Nimr.
The revered cleric had emerged as a leading figure in protests in the Eastern Province, a Shiite-majority part of the Sunni-majority Saudi Arabia.
Relations between the two gulf countries have continued to decline since. Saudi Arabia has accused Iran of supplying weapons to their foes the Houthis, a militant group in neighboring Yemen being fought by a Saudi-led coalition.
U.S. officials also believe Iran launched attacks from its territory on oil facilities in the kingdom. Tehran has denied involvement.
The tripartite statement said embassies would be reopened within two months, and emphasized the importance of respecting each other’s sovereignty and not interfering in each other’s internal affairs.
A couple in Iran, Astiyazh Haghighi and her fiance Amir Mohammad Ahmadi, are facing jail time of more than 10 years each for dancing “romantically” in front of the Azadi Tower in Tehran, the country’s capital.
They were convicted of “encouraging public corruption and public prostitution” and were also charged with “gathering with the intention of disrupting national security.”
Ms Haghighi, who disobeyed the country’s restrictive laws for women by refusing to wear a headscarf, and her fiancé, Mr Ahmadi, were each given a sentence of 10 years and six months in prison, according to the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA). Additionally, they were barred from leaving Iran and from using the internet.
According to sources close to their families quoted by HRANA, they were denied access to lawyers during the judicial proceedings, and efforts to secure their release on bail have been unsuccessful.
The group also added that Ms Haghighi is currently held in the infamous Qarchak women’s prison outside of Tehran, a dreaded facility whose condition is often criticised by activists.
A woman who was sentenced to hanging has reportedly died after suffering a heart attack while watching 16 men get executed before her.
The Iranian woman, Zahra Esmaili and her two children were reportedly subjected to cruelty at the hands of her abusive husband and eventually snapped, shooting the rumoured senior Ministry of Intelligence official dead on July 16, 2017.
Her kids who claimed to have been asleep in their rooms at the time, were arrested as her co-conspirators, with her daughter sentenced to five years and her son cleared and released.
Zahra’s death was confirmed by Iranian rights organisations in February last year. Days later, her lawyer Omid Moradi claimed Zahra had suffered a heart attack in the moments leading up to her hanging, a human rights group told The Mirror.
Moradi said she died “after witnessing 16 men being executed before her”. As if her death wasn’t enough, the cruel guards hung her corpse, with her husband’s mother kicking the stool from beneath her.
However in a bid to cover up the sequence of events, officials published an account denying she’d died as a result of a heart attack, which Moradi claimed had been scribbled on her death certificate.
However in a bid to cover up the sequence of events, officials published an account denying she’d died as a result of a heart attack, which Moradi claimed had been scribbled on her death certificate.
The officials added a horrifying detail, claiming that her son had assisted the mother-in-law in helping the hangman. Speaking with The Mirror, Iran HR Director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam explained how the regime uses the idea of execution to instill fear into the general population. Moghaddam said;
“And this is the effect they’re looking for. And it’s the same in each case: ‘Obey our rules. This can happen to you’.”That’s the message.” The officials’ decision to publicise Esmaili’s case, and to share the fact that her son was complicit in their barbarity, was rare as most killings happen behind closed doors, Mahmood added.
He also questioned why the Iranian leaders ban most civil liberties, while allowing everyday citizens to decide between life and death. He said:
“So how is it possible that they give the responsibility of taking life to a common citizen? They make ordinary citizens complicit in what they actually are doing.”
In the last few years, people have called on Western powers to address Iran’s death penalty record and other human rights violations as part of their negotiations over the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal.
Iran on Saturday executed Ruhollah Zam, a former opposition figure who had lived in exile in France and was implicated in anti-government protests, days after his sentence was upheld.
State television said the “counter-revolutionary” Zam was hanged in the morning after the supreme court upheld his sentence due to “the severity of the crimes” committed against the Islamic republic.
Judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili had on Tuesday said Zam’s sentence was upheld by the supreme court “more than a month ago”.
London-based rights group Amnesty International, in a statement after his verdict was confirmed, described Zam as a “journalist and dissident”.
It said the confirmation marked “a shocking escalation in the use of the death penalty as a weapon of repression.” Iran’s Revolutionary Guards announced the arrest of Zam in October 2019, claiming he had been “directed by France’s intelligence service”.
State television said he was “under the protection of several countries’ intelligence services.”
The official IRNA news agency said he was also convicted of espionage for France and an unnamed country in the region, cooperating with the “hostile government of America”, acting against “the country’s security”, insulting the “sanctity of Islam” and instigating violence during the 2017 protests.
At least 25 people were killed during the unrest in December 2017 and January 2018 that was sparked by economic hardship.
Zam, who was granted political asylum in France and reportedly lived in Paris, ran a channel on the Telegram messaging app called Amadnews.
Telegram shut down the channel after Iran demanded it removes the account for inciting an “armed uprising”.
Zam was charged with “corruption on earth” — one of the most serious offences under Iranian law — and sentenced to death in June.
State television aired an “interview” with him in July, in which he appears as saying he believed in reformism until he was detained in 2009 during protests against the disputed re-election of ultra-conservative president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
He also denied having instigated violence through his Telegram channel.
Amnesty has repeatedly called on Iran to stop broadcasting videos of “confessions” by suspects, saying they “violate the defendants’ rights”.
Zam is one of several people to have been put on death row over participation or links to protests that rocked Iran between 2017 and 2019.
Navid Afkari, a 27-year-old wrestler, was executed at a prison in the southern city of Shiraz in September.
The judiciary said he had been found guilty of “voluntary homicide” for stabbing to death a government employee in August 2018.
Shiraz and several other urban centres across Iran had been the scene of anti-government protests and demonstrations at the time over economic and social hardship.
Three young men were also sentenced to death over links to deadly 2019 protests, but Iran’s supreme court said last week that it would retry them over a request by their defence team.
Their sentences were initially upheld by a tribunal over evidence the judiciary said was found on their phones of them setting alight banks, buses and public buildings during the wave of anti-government protests.
Amnesty International said Iran executed at least 251 people last year, the world’s second-highest toll after China.
Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, insists the result of the US presidential election “will not affect” Tehran’s policy towards Washington.
“Our policy… is clearly defined. It does not change with the movement of individuals,” he said. “It does not matter to us who comes and goes.”
Donald Trump has pursued a “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran since he abandoned a nuclear deal in 2018.
His challenger, Joe Biden, has said he will consider rejoining the accord.
The deal, negotiated in 2015 while Mr Biden was Barack Obama’s vice-president, saw Iran given relief from sanctions in return for limits on sensitive nuclear activities.
President Trump said it was “defective at its core” and reinstated sanctions that have crippled Iran’s economy in an attempt to force it to negotiate a replacement.
Iran has refused to do so and retaliated by rolling back a number of key nuclear commitments.
The two countries also came close to war this January, after Mr Trump ordered a drone strike in Iraq that killed top Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani, saying the Revolutionary Guards general was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American troops.
Iran responded by firing ballistic missiles at Iraqi military bases housing US forces. No Americans were killed, but more than 100 were diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries.
Ayatollah Khamenei gave a speech on Tuesday to mark the 41st anniversary of the seizure of the US embassy in Tehran by radical Iranian students, who took American staff hostage for 444 days.
There have been no diplomatic relations between the US and Iran since then.
“Today is election day in the United States. Things may happen, but they do not concern us,” said the supreme leader, who controls Iran’s armed forces and has final say on all matters of state.
“We follow a sensible, calculated policy [which] cannot be affected by changes of personnel.”
Ayatollah Khamenei also mocked the US for holding a vote that the incumbent president had warned could be “the most rigged election in history”.
“This is American democracy,” he said.
In an interview with CBS on Monday, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif also declared that the Iranian government did not have a preferred candidate.
“The statements by the Biden camp have been more promising, but we will have to wait and see,” he said. “What counts is the behaviour.”
“The outcome of the ‘maximum pressure’ policy has not been very promising for the United States. It has hurt Iran, but it hasn’t brought the type of political change that the United States desired.”
Asked if Iran would enter into negotiations with a Biden administration on a new nuclear deal, Mr Zarif replied: “No. If we wanted to do that, we would have done it with President Trump four years ago.”
The daily coronavirus death toll is on the worrying trajectory in Iran, where a record 239 died with Covid-19 in the past 24 hours.
That increase brings Iran’s overall death toll to 27,658 since the pandemic began, the country’s health ministry reported on Wednesday. It has the highest official death toll and confirmed number of infections in the Middle East, according to Johns Hopkins University.
A further 4,019 cases were also registered on 7 October, pushing the total number of people who have officially tested positive in the country to 483,844. Today’s rise in infections is the second highest since the outbreak began, the highest being 4,151 a day earlier.
Authorities have attributed the rise in cases to an increase in testing and people flouting social-distancing rules.
MORE WORLD LEADERS THAT HAVE CONTRACTED COVID19. Naijapremiumgist brings to you popular and influential leaders around the world that have contracted COVID19. Some of them have been declared healthy and fit to continue ruling recently. The countries include:
Iranian leaders
Iran, the epicentre of the Mideast’s initial coronavirus outbreak, has seen several top officials test positive. Among them are Senior Vice-President Eshaq Jahangiri and Vice-President Massoumeh Ebtekar. Cabinet members have tested positive, too.
Eshaq Jahangiri
Massoumeh Ebtekar
Indian leaders
Vice-President M. Venkaiah Naidu, 71, recently tested positive but his office said he had no symptoms and was quarantined at home. Home Minister Amit Shah, the No. 2 man in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, was hospitalized for COVID-19 last month and has recovered. Junior Railways Minister Suresh Angadi last week was the first federal minister to die from COVID-19.
Venkaiah Naidu
Amit shah
Suresh Angadi
Israeli leaders
Israel’s then-Health Minister Yaakov Litzman tested positive in April and recovered. Litzman is a leader in Israel’s ultra-Orthodox community, which has seen a high rate of infection as many have defied restrictions on religious gatherings. The minister for Jerusalem affairs, Rafi Peretz, tested positive over the summer as cases surged in the country and recovered.
Rafi Peretz
Yaakov Litzman
South African leaders
The country’s Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe and Labour Minister Thulas Nxesi were infected as cases surged in June and July.
Mantashe Gwede
Thulas Nxesi
South Sudanese leaders
From South Sudan, Vice-President Riek Machar was among several cabinet ministers infected.
Riek Machar
Naijapremiumgist also observed the Canadian space and here is the information on Canadian politicians and COVID-19
Canadian politicians from federal party leaders down to the municipal level have also been personally affected by COVID-19. Here are a few who have either tested positive or needed to isolate themselves after possible exposure.
Erin O’Toole
The federal Conservative leader and his wife tested positive for the virus last month, not long after O’Toole won the leadership of the party. It’s believed he contracted the virus from a staffer who was in his immediate circle. He emerged from quarantine to deliver his official reply to the Liberals’ throne speech. “We all have to be very cautious,” he said upon his return.
Yves-François Blanchet
The Bloc Québécois leader and his wife also tested positive for the virus last month. He returned to Parliament the same day as O’Toole, saying he was lucky to have caught a mild case of the illness. “Some people go through it much more painfully than I did,” he said. “I was very, very, very lucky. Some people die of that thing.”
Justin Trudeau
The prime minister’s wife, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, tested positive for COVID-19 on March 12 after a trip to the United Kingdom. The prime minister subsequently went into a 14-day isolation at home with his three kids, just as the pandemic lockdown was beginning in Canada. Trudeau remained in isolation for almost a month, not returning to Parliament Hill until April 8. He never developed symptoms and never got tested for COVID-19, but says he will take an antibody test when they are widely available.
Bill Morneau
The former federal finance minister was one of at least eight MPs who were tested for COVID-19 and self-isolated after meeting with United Nations World Food Program executive director David Beasley in Ottawa on March 11 and March 12. Beasley met privately with Morneau, attended a reception and appeared at a House of Commons committee. Beasley tested positive for COVID-19 about a week later.
Kamal Khera
Kamal Khera
The Brampton-West Liberal MP tested positive for COVID-19 on March 25. She was one of the MPs who met with Beasley, although her office said it was not clear where she contracted the virus.
Seamus O’Regan
The federal minister of natural resources was tested and self-isolated in early March after developing a bad cold. He had gone to a mining conference in Toronto attended by more than 23,000 people from around the world. At least three people at the conference tested positive for COVID-19, but O’Regan was not among them.
Sylvie Parent
The mayor of Longueuil, Que., on Montreal’s south shore, tested positive for COVID-19 last month. Her positive test led to the isolation and testing of at least seven other Quebec politicians, including three provincial cabinet minister
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