06-12-08 - and more
Cuba to abandon salary equality
Cuba is to abolish its system of equal pay for all and allow workers and managers to earn performance bonuses, a senior official has announced.
Vice-Minister for Labour Carlos Mateu said the current system - in place since the communist revolution in 1959 - was no longer "convenient".
He said wage differentiation should improve production and services.
President Raul Castro has introduced a series of reforms since succeeding his ailing brother Fidel in February.
Writing in the communist party newspaper Granma Mr Mateu said workers would receive a minimum 5% bonus for meeting targets but with no ceiling on salaries.
Managers could earn a 30% bonus if the team working under them increased production, he said.
The minister pointed out that the current wage system sapped employees' incentives to excel since everyone earned the same regardless of performance.
"It's harmful to give a worker less than he deserves, it's also harmful to give him what he doesn't deserve," the newspaper article said.
Challenging Marxist orthodoxy
But the impact in terms of purchasing power will be limited, the BBC's Michael Voss in Havana says.
The average wage in Cuba for everyone - from doctors to farm labourers - is about $20 (£10) a month.
Even before the recent sharp rise in oil and food prices Cuba was spending billions of dollars on imports, and that bill is likely to rise sharply, our correspondent says.
So far most of the reforms announced since Raul Castro took over the presidency have involved lifting restrictions such as the bans on mobile phones and computers.
The latest change is a more fundamental challenge to Marxist economic orthodoxy, our correspondent adds.
* http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7449776.stm First of all...there's a picture of Cuban money along side this article and I didn't realize their bills had such a sweet design. Cuba is a changing...I'd like to go there at some point. I'm glad to be going to New York tonight but other than that I sorta wish I was in Cuba right now...I've got that bug again-sometimes it's a little quieter, but I suppose it's never gone.
Tight security a month from quake
A month on from the Sichuan earthquake, Chinese officials have imposed tight security in some of the damaged areas, apparently to prevent protests.
Police in the city of Dujianyan stopped parents from holding a memorial ceremony at the rubble of a collapsed school where their children died.
Journalists were told they were banned from the city, and some were detained.
Parents have been demanding to know whether poorly-built schools played a part in the deaths of their children.
Thousands of schoolchildren were among the 87,000 people killed or missing after the massive 12 May earthquake.
Five million people also lost their homes, and officials estimate rebuilding work will take at least three years.
Looking for blame
The government's rapid response to the disaster has drawn widespread praise, but tensions are emerging as efforts shift to focus on reconstruction.
Parents who lost their children want to know why so many schools collapsed - something many blame on shoddy construction linked to local corruption.
Early on Thursday, a number of parents tried to get the remains of the Dujiangyan primary school to hold a small memorial, but a line of police stopped them from going inside.
The Chinese media had been instructed not to cover this kind of story, and a member of the BBC and five other journalists were detained for a short time for approaching the parents.
"This is not censorship," one policeman told the BBC's China correspondent James Reynolds.
Police also reportedly cordoned off a collapsed middle school in Juyuan after a 50-strong crowd gathered outside.
"All we want to do is remember them this day," Zhao Deqin, a mother whose 15-year-old twin daughters died in the disaster, told Reuters news agency.
In Beichuan, where about 1,300 children were killed, parents were able to gather around the remains of a school to grieve.
Mu Qibing, whose 17-year-old son was killed, told Reuters: "They said this building was strong and quake-proof, but when we saw it, the concrete was like talcum powder and the steel was as thin as noodles."
"None of us have seen our children yet, not even after one month."
Beichuan suffered such severe damage that the whole town will be rebuilt in a new location.
'What happens now?'
China is not holding any formal commemorations to mark the one month anniversary of the earthquake.
The government has ordered its departments to cut spending so that funds can be allocated to reconstruction efforts.
"The government has done a good job so far but we need to know what is going to happen to us," Bai Tao, who lost his home and business, told AFP news agency.
"We business people have real problems. But all we've gotten is free water and instant noodles. We need to know about the future," he said.
The BBC's China analyst, Shirong Chen, says the earthquake has brought about unexpected political and social change that will directly affect the reconstruction effort.
The unprecedented openness in China's media coverage is likely to continue, he says, and there will be a demand for accountability in the way tens of millions of dollars of donations are used.
The earthquake has also injected a strong sense of national unity, he adds, with volunteers from all over the country pouring into disaster areas to work alongside soldiers and rescue teams.
*I love how the quote from the cop here is "This is not censorship". No explination...nothing. Just "You're not allowed to write about this, or interview these people-this is not censorship" In that case, I would really like to know what exactly it is. Why exactly it is. I know the basics of Chinese history-how people came to a point where they just don't ask questions or demand explinations; but it's just so far outside of myself-completely foreign in every way-it still knocks me down every time. This is not censorship.
Chinese babies named 'Olympic Games'
More than 4,000 children in China have been given the name Aoyun, meaning Olympic Games, in the past 15 years.
The rise in popularity of the name is seen as a sign of support for the Games being staged in August in Beijing.
Officials in charge of identity cards say that more than 92% of the 4,104 registered Aoyuns are boys.
It is not uncommon for Chinese children to be given names of common events and popular slogans - such as Defend China, Build the Nation and Space Travel.
There are 290,798 registered Civilisations.
The first surge in Aoyuns came in 1992, when China applied to host to the 2000 Games. About 680 Aoyuns were registered at the time.
In 2002 another 553 Aoyuns were named, after China was chosen to host the 2008 Games.
The BBC's Chinese service says that in recent weeks babies have also been given names such as Hope for Sichuan, to show solidarity with earthquake victims.
* http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7448363.stm This is an interesting practice to say the least. Some of these popular phrase names seem silly to me, but some are vaguely beautiful in sentiment. Hope for Sichuan, obviously. And if you go by the theory that most people seem to fit the names in which they were given, what would this mean for these infants?
Man in court over comedy TV show
A man ended up being arrested and charged - after laughing too much at BBC TV's Have I Got News For You.
Chris Cocker, 36, from Blackburn, was chuckling so vigorously at a comment by comedy panellist Paul Merton that he fell off the sofa.
A concerned neighbour in the flat below heard the thud and called the police.
But when he refused to co-operate, Cocker was arrested. He admitted in court to resisting a police officer and was given a conditional discharge.
A charge of assaulting a police officer was withdrawn when Cocker appeared before magistrates in Blackburn, Lancashire.
Mr Cocker said: "I fell off the settee in hysterics and hit the floor and got myself up and started carrying on watching the telly and the next thing I know there was a knock on the door.
"The bit where I lost it the most was when I shut the door and the policeman had stuck his foot in the doorway and was refusing to let me shut my own front door."
After being sprayed with pepper spray, Mr Cocker was put into a police van and taken to a police station where he said he was stripped naked and spent a night in the cells.
A spokesman for Lancashire Police said officers used a pepper spray as "reasonable force" for their own protection after they feared for their safety when he became aggressive.
Have I Got News For You, currently in its 35th series, has been running on the BBC for almost 20 years and involves celebrity guests answering questions and cracking jokes about current affairs.
* http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/lancashire/7449370.stm Ahahaha. There's a video of the news broadcast on this page...Pretty funny stuff.
Marry or lose job, says Iran firm
Single workers at one of Iran's major state-owned companies have been told to marry by September or face being fired, Iranian newspapers have reported.
The Pars Special Economic Energy Zone Company employs thousands of people, mostly young men, on Iran's Gulf coast.
Being married is a job requirement, a directive from the company is reported as saying.
Correspondents say the ruling appears to be an attempt to reduce the number of prostitutes working in the area.
The company controls Iran's large network of gas and petrochemical facilities around the coastal city of Assalouyeh on the Gulf coast.
Its directive, according to the Etemad newspaper, says that despite requests "some of our colleagues did not fulfil their commitments and are still single".
It continues: "As being married is one of the criteria of employment, we are announcing for the last time that all the female and male colleagues have until September 21 to go ahead with this important and moral religious duty."
In the same vein, the governor of the eastern province of North Khorasan ruled recently that only married people would be hired for official posts in the region.
Economic difficulties in Iran have led many people to postpone getting married, despite sexual relations being illegal outside marriage.
Iran police move into fashion business
Women in high-heeled shoes and plenty of make-up strut down the catwalk amid clouds of artificial smoke.
It is the first time live models have been allowed to appear in a fashion show in post-revolutionary Iran.
The only unusual aspect is that they are all wearing Islamic dress; including some draped from head to toe in the all enveloping chador.
It's part of a new drive to give women more attractive choices of Islamic dress that allow them to express their individuality, while remaining within the letter of the law.
Not everyone in the all female audience was happy.
"I don't think ordinary people will like this show because everything comes from Arab culture," complains Faranak who says she wants something more Iranian and indigenous.
Her friend agrees: "Here we didn't see anything interesting - in terms of colours and designs we have much better stuff; just look on the streets of Tehran they're wearing much better clothes".
'Western dolls'
Many of the women on the streets of Tehran do indeed look more like Western fashion models than the models on the catwalk.
In skimpy tight overcoats and high heeled shoes and token headscarves perched on the back of their dyed hair, they are what the authorities call "western dolls".
Many young women born after the revolution do not seem to have accepted the official idea of Islamic dress.
Conservative MP Rafat Bayat, who always wears a black chador, believes the problem is the state never educated young people properly.
"The generation born after the revolution has grown up in families that do not believe in these principles and they are estranged from these laws," she says.
"We thought there would be no problem because we had an Islamic Republic and we thought everyone knew the constitution," says Mrs Bayat with regret.
According to the law, a woman who does not cover her hair and body in public can be fined or imprisoned for up to two months.
But there are hundreds of shops throughout North Tehran selling glamorous strapless dresses and low-cut, beaded tops for women to wear at parties.
Heavy-handed
During the reformist period, restrictions were relaxed to allow women to wear bright colours for the first time since the revolution.
But right-wing conservatives are outraged by what they see as western permissiveness now creeping into Islamic dress.
There is also a growing awareness that heavy-handed police action like raids, arrests and closure of fashion boutiques simply do not work.
And interestingly, though he is an ultra conservative, President Ahmadinejad did not bring about the crackdown on un-Islamic dress that many feared.
"Observance of hijab has got worse since the new government because Mr Ahmadinejad is not that strict on this issue," complains Mrs Bayat.
"Mr Ahmadinejad thinks we should not use force when acting on this issue so as a result hijab has become weaker" she says.
New models
Aware that imposing Islamic dress by force hasn't worked, Iran's police decided to hold their own fashion exhibition recently to educate women about what they should be wearing - though there were no live models.
"We want to guide our designers to meet the needs of our society," explained Sardar Ansari of the Iranian police force. "We don't want them to get their ideas about fashion from satellite television."
The police exhibition included displays about what is considered un-Islamic dress and an attempt to convert young women to wearing the chador.
For many older women it's a symbol of their commitment to the revolution. But young women are increasingly turning away from the chador - it's expensive, hot and difficult to wear.
So chador designers have come up with new models to make them more stylish and practical, for example a chador with sleeves.
"The traditional chador is a semi circle of cloth, and keeping it on your head is really hard and you absolutely have to wear something underneath - an overcoat and headscarf - to complete your Islamic dress.
"But by wearing this new type of chador it's not necessary to wear an overcoat underneath," says designer Fahimeh Mahoutchi
Increasingly there is a recognition that women - rather than men - should be the ones who decide what kind of Islamic dress they wear.
"Clothing is not something you can impose from outside; it is something you should accept willingly and instinctively," says Mrs Ghandforoush from the provincial governor's office.
"Each person has his own particular background and attitude to dress."
In other words, the establishment realises that the children of the revolution are rebelling against drab, uniform-style clothing, and it wants to keep them in line by offering a little glamour.
* http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6213854.stm I really should know more about this topic. It pretty much fascinates me every time I run across something pertaining to it. I guess it goes back to just how completely foreign some of the worlds cultures and laws can be to me...which obviously makes sence and all-but sometimes it just blows your mind a little bit to try and look at something you've never had to think about at all from the opposite point of view.
'Witch' family killed in India
Four members of a family have died after being attacked by villagers who said they were practising witchcraft in India's north-eastern state of Assam.
Police said that the four, including two women, were stoned by the villagers and may have been buried alive.
The killings in a remote village involved Santhal tribal people.
Such killings are common among immigrant tribespeople whose ancestors were brought to work the tea gardens in West Bengal and Assam by the British.
They are mostly common in the communities of Santhal, Oraon and Munda tribespeople.
'Evil spell'
One of the victims, Lakhan Majhi, 65, was asked to face a "public trial" on Tuesday evening at Koilajuli Milanpur village in Assam.
Hundreds of his neighbours blamed him for casting an evil spell on a villager who died after getting sick.
Then Majhi, his wife, son and daughter-in-law were brutally attacked with stones and bricks.
Police said the four were dragged to a nearby jungle and buried alive.
More than 500 people have been killed in Assam - and half as many in neighbouring West Bengal - in the past few years because their neighbours thought they were witches.
A study on these killings by a Bengal police officer, Asit Baran Choudhury, suggests that most of those accused of practising witchcraft and then killed are "isolated families" with some landed property.
He says most of those killed are widows.
"Powerful people in the community target them to acquire the land," says the study.
But in some cases, whole families are killed because they have challenged the authority of the community elders.
Police say that was perhaps the motive behind the attack on the Majhis in Assam's Milanpur village on Tuesday.
Villages such as Milanpur have little education and healthcare provision, lack electricity and safe drinking water, and face rampant disease.
*Another witch hunt from a completely different part of the world. Apparently these things are more common than I would have thought...not that I've spent much time thinking about it up till now.
'Non-planet' Pluto gets new class
"Plutoid" is the word of the moment for astronomers.
It is the new classification that has been sanctioned for the object that was formerly known as the "ninth planet".
It is nearly two years since the International Astronomical Union (IAU) stripped Pluto of its former status as a "proper" planet.
Now an IAU committee, meeting in Oslo, has suggested that small, nearly spherical objects orbiting beyond Neptune should carry the "plutoid" tag.
As astronomy's official nomenclature organisation, the IAU must approve all new names and classifications.
Its decision at the 2006 General Assembly to demote Pluto from "planet" to "dwarf planet" caused an international furore.
Pluto's relegation was felt necessary because new telescope technologies had begun to reveal far-off objects that rivalled the world in size.
Without a new classification, these discoveries raised the prospect that textbooks could soon be talking about 50 or more "planets" in the Solar System.
That prospect proved too much for IAU members who took the historic decision to redefine the Solar System to have just eight major worlds - Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
They relegated Pluto to a grouping that includes Ceres (the largest asteroid), and Eris, an object slightly larger than Pluto that orbits even further out from the Sun in an icy region known as the Kuiper Belt.
The IAU's Committee on Small Body Nomenclature has now decided that dwarf planets that move beyond Neptune should be placed in a new sub-category, the plutoid.
More plutoids
In a statement released on Tuesday, the IAU further explained the plutoid definition as celestial bodies that "have sufficient mass for their self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that they assume a hydrostatic equilibrium (near-spherical) shape, and that have not cleared [their orbits of debris].
"The two known and named plutoids are Pluto and Eris. It is expected that more plutoids will be named as science progresses and new discoveries are made."
The plutoids will also need to have a minimum brightness.
Ceres will not be considered a plutoid because of its position in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
The classification will not placate those incensed by Pluto's demotion.
Alan Stern, a former Nasa space sciences chief and principal investigator on a mission to Pluto, was scathing in his condemnation of the IAU.
"It's just some people in a smoke-filled room who dreamed it up," he told the Associated Press. "Plutoids or haemorrhoids, whatever they call it. This is irrelevant."
* http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7449735.stm "It's just some people in a smoke-filled room who dreamed it up," he told the Associated Press. "Plutoids or haemorrhoids, whatever they call it. This is irrelevant." ~ Isn't this true of most things?
Cuba is to abolish its system of equal pay for all and allow workers and managers to earn performance bonuses, a senior official has announced.
Vice-Minister for Labour Carlos Mateu said the current system - in place since the communist revolution in 1959 - was no longer "convenient".
He said wage differentiation should improve production and services.
President Raul Castro has introduced a series of reforms since succeeding his ailing brother Fidel in February.
Writing in the communist party newspaper Granma Mr Mateu said workers would receive a minimum 5% bonus for meeting targets but with no ceiling on salaries.
Managers could earn a 30% bonus if the team working under them increased production, he said.
The minister pointed out that the current wage system sapped employees' incentives to excel since everyone earned the same regardless of performance.
"It's harmful to give a worker less than he deserves, it's also harmful to give him what he doesn't deserve," the newspaper article said.
Challenging Marxist orthodoxy
But the impact in terms of purchasing power will be limited, the BBC's Michael Voss in Havana says.
The average wage in Cuba for everyone - from doctors to farm labourers - is about $20 (£10) a month.
Even before the recent sharp rise in oil and food prices Cuba was spending billions of dollars on imports, and that bill is likely to rise sharply, our correspondent says.
So far most of the reforms announced since Raul Castro took over the presidency have involved lifting restrictions such as the bans on mobile phones and computers.
The latest change is a more fundamental challenge to Marxist economic orthodoxy, our correspondent adds.
* http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7449776.stm First of all...there's a picture of Cuban money along side this article and I didn't realize their bills had such a sweet design. Cuba is a changing...I'd like to go there at some point. I'm glad to be going to New York tonight but other than that I sorta wish I was in Cuba right now...I've got that bug again-sometimes it's a little quieter, but I suppose it's never gone.
Tight security a month from quake
A month on from the Sichuan earthquake, Chinese officials have imposed tight security in some of the damaged areas, apparently to prevent protests.
Police in the city of Dujianyan stopped parents from holding a memorial ceremony at the rubble of a collapsed school where their children died.
Journalists were told they were banned from the city, and some were detained.
Parents have been demanding to know whether poorly-built schools played a part in the deaths of their children.
Thousands of schoolchildren were among the 87,000 people killed or missing after the massive 12 May earthquake.
Five million people also lost their homes, and officials estimate rebuilding work will take at least three years.
Looking for blame
The government's rapid response to the disaster has drawn widespread praise, but tensions are emerging as efforts shift to focus on reconstruction.
Parents who lost their children want to know why so many schools collapsed - something many blame on shoddy construction linked to local corruption.
Early on Thursday, a number of parents tried to get the remains of the Dujiangyan primary school to hold a small memorial, but a line of police stopped them from going inside.
The Chinese media had been instructed not to cover this kind of story, and a member of the BBC and five other journalists were detained for a short time for approaching the parents.
"This is not censorship," one policeman told the BBC's China correspondent James Reynolds.
Police also reportedly cordoned off a collapsed middle school in Juyuan after a 50-strong crowd gathered outside.
"All we want to do is remember them this day," Zhao Deqin, a mother whose 15-year-old twin daughters died in the disaster, told Reuters news agency.
In Beichuan, where about 1,300 children were killed, parents were able to gather around the remains of a school to grieve.
Mu Qibing, whose 17-year-old son was killed, told Reuters: "They said this building was strong and quake-proof, but when we saw it, the concrete was like talcum powder and the steel was as thin as noodles."
"None of us have seen our children yet, not even after one month."
Beichuan suffered such severe damage that the whole town will be rebuilt in a new location.
'What happens now?'
China is not holding any formal commemorations to mark the one month anniversary of the earthquake.
The government has ordered its departments to cut spending so that funds can be allocated to reconstruction efforts.
"The government has done a good job so far but we need to know what is going to happen to us," Bai Tao, who lost his home and business, told AFP news agency.
"We business people have real problems. But all we've gotten is free water and instant noodles. We need to know about the future," he said.
The BBC's China analyst, Shirong Chen, says the earthquake has brought about unexpected political and social change that will directly affect the reconstruction effort.
The unprecedented openness in China's media coverage is likely to continue, he says, and there will be a demand for accountability in the way tens of millions of dollars of donations are used.
The earthquake has also injected a strong sense of national unity, he adds, with volunteers from all over the country pouring into disaster areas to work alongside soldiers and rescue teams.
*I love how the quote from the cop here is "This is not censorship". No explination...nothing. Just "You're not allowed to write about this, or interview these people-this is not censorship" In that case, I would really like to know what exactly it is. Why exactly it is. I know the basics of Chinese history-how people came to a point where they just don't ask questions or demand explinations; but it's just so far outside of myself-completely foreign in every way-it still knocks me down every time. This is not censorship.
Chinese babies named 'Olympic Games'
More than 4,000 children in China have been given the name Aoyun, meaning Olympic Games, in the past 15 years.
The rise in popularity of the name is seen as a sign of support for the Games being staged in August in Beijing.
Officials in charge of identity cards say that more than 92% of the 4,104 registered Aoyuns are boys.
It is not uncommon for Chinese children to be given names of common events and popular slogans - such as Defend China, Build the Nation and Space Travel.
There are 290,798 registered Civilisations.
The first surge in Aoyuns came in 1992, when China applied to host to the 2000 Games. About 680 Aoyuns were registered at the time.
In 2002 another 553 Aoyuns were named, after China was chosen to host the 2008 Games.
The BBC's Chinese service says that in recent weeks babies have also been given names such as Hope for Sichuan, to show solidarity with earthquake victims.
* http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7448363.stm This is an interesting practice to say the least. Some of these popular phrase names seem silly to me, but some are vaguely beautiful in sentiment. Hope for Sichuan, obviously. And if you go by the theory that most people seem to fit the names in which they were given, what would this mean for these infants?
Man in court over comedy TV show
A man ended up being arrested and charged - after laughing too much at BBC TV's Have I Got News For You.
Chris Cocker, 36, from Blackburn, was chuckling so vigorously at a comment by comedy panellist Paul Merton that he fell off the sofa.
A concerned neighbour in the flat below heard the thud and called the police.
But when he refused to co-operate, Cocker was arrested. He admitted in court to resisting a police officer and was given a conditional discharge.
A charge of assaulting a police officer was withdrawn when Cocker appeared before magistrates in Blackburn, Lancashire.
Mr Cocker said: "I fell off the settee in hysterics and hit the floor and got myself up and started carrying on watching the telly and the next thing I know there was a knock on the door.
"The bit where I lost it the most was when I shut the door and the policeman had stuck his foot in the doorway and was refusing to let me shut my own front door."
After being sprayed with pepper spray, Mr Cocker was put into a police van and taken to a police station where he said he was stripped naked and spent a night in the cells.
A spokesman for Lancashire Police said officers used a pepper spray as "reasonable force" for their own protection after they feared for their safety when he became aggressive.
Have I Got News For You, currently in its 35th series, has been running on the BBC for almost 20 years and involves celebrity guests answering questions and cracking jokes about current affairs.
* http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/lancashire/7449370.stm Ahahaha. There's a video of the news broadcast on this page...Pretty funny stuff.
Marry or lose job, says Iran firm
Single workers at one of Iran's major state-owned companies have been told to marry by September or face being fired, Iranian newspapers have reported.
The Pars Special Economic Energy Zone Company employs thousands of people, mostly young men, on Iran's Gulf coast.
Being married is a job requirement, a directive from the company is reported as saying.
Correspondents say the ruling appears to be an attempt to reduce the number of prostitutes working in the area.
The company controls Iran's large network of gas and petrochemical facilities around the coastal city of Assalouyeh on the Gulf coast.
Its directive, according to the Etemad newspaper, says that despite requests "some of our colleagues did not fulfil their commitments and are still single".
It continues: "As being married is one of the criteria of employment, we are announcing for the last time that all the female and male colleagues have until September 21 to go ahead with this important and moral religious duty."
In the same vein, the governor of the eastern province of North Khorasan ruled recently that only married people would be hired for official posts in the region.
Economic difficulties in Iran have led many people to postpone getting married, despite sexual relations being illegal outside marriage.
Iran police move into fashion business
Women in high-heeled shoes and plenty of make-up strut down the catwalk amid clouds of artificial smoke.
It is the first time live models have been allowed to appear in a fashion show in post-revolutionary Iran.
The only unusual aspect is that they are all wearing Islamic dress; including some draped from head to toe in the all enveloping chador.
It's part of a new drive to give women more attractive choices of Islamic dress that allow them to express their individuality, while remaining within the letter of the law.
Not everyone in the all female audience was happy.
"I don't think ordinary people will like this show because everything comes from Arab culture," complains Faranak who says she wants something more Iranian and indigenous.
Her friend agrees: "Here we didn't see anything interesting - in terms of colours and designs we have much better stuff; just look on the streets of Tehran they're wearing much better clothes".
'Western dolls'
Many of the women on the streets of Tehran do indeed look more like Western fashion models than the models on the catwalk.
In skimpy tight overcoats and high heeled shoes and token headscarves perched on the back of their dyed hair, they are what the authorities call "western dolls".
Many young women born after the revolution do not seem to have accepted the official idea of Islamic dress.
Conservative MP Rafat Bayat, who always wears a black chador, believes the problem is the state never educated young people properly.
"The generation born after the revolution has grown up in families that do not believe in these principles and they are estranged from these laws," she says.
"We thought there would be no problem because we had an Islamic Republic and we thought everyone knew the constitution," says Mrs Bayat with regret.
According to the law, a woman who does not cover her hair and body in public can be fined or imprisoned for up to two months.
But there are hundreds of shops throughout North Tehran selling glamorous strapless dresses and low-cut, beaded tops for women to wear at parties.
Heavy-handed
During the reformist period, restrictions were relaxed to allow women to wear bright colours for the first time since the revolution.
But right-wing conservatives are outraged by what they see as western permissiveness now creeping into Islamic dress.
There is also a growing awareness that heavy-handed police action like raids, arrests and closure of fashion boutiques simply do not work.
And interestingly, though he is an ultra conservative, President Ahmadinejad did not bring about the crackdown on un-Islamic dress that many feared.
"Observance of hijab has got worse since the new government because Mr Ahmadinejad is not that strict on this issue," complains Mrs Bayat.
"Mr Ahmadinejad thinks we should not use force when acting on this issue so as a result hijab has become weaker" she says.
New models
Aware that imposing Islamic dress by force hasn't worked, Iran's police decided to hold their own fashion exhibition recently to educate women about what they should be wearing - though there were no live models.
"We want to guide our designers to meet the needs of our society," explained Sardar Ansari of the Iranian police force. "We don't want them to get their ideas about fashion from satellite television."
The police exhibition included displays about what is considered un-Islamic dress and an attempt to convert young women to wearing the chador.
For many older women it's a symbol of their commitment to the revolution. But young women are increasingly turning away from the chador - it's expensive, hot and difficult to wear.
So chador designers have come up with new models to make them more stylish and practical, for example a chador with sleeves.
"The traditional chador is a semi circle of cloth, and keeping it on your head is really hard and you absolutely have to wear something underneath - an overcoat and headscarf - to complete your Islamic dress.
"But by wearing this new type of chador it's not necessary to wear an overcoat underneath," says designer Fahimeh Mahoutchi
Increasingly there is a recognition that women - rather than men - should be the ones who decide what kind of Islamic dress they wear.
"Clothing is not something you can impose from outside; it is something you should accept willingly and instinctively," says Mrs Ghandforoush from the provincial governor's office.
"Each person has his own particular background and attitude to dress."
In other words, the establishment realises that the children of the revolution are rebelling against drab, uniform-style clothing, and it wants to keep them in line by offering a little glamour.
* http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6213854.stm I really should know more about this topic. It pretty much fascinates me every time I run across something pertaining to it. I guess it goes back to just how completely foreign some of the worlds cultures and laws can be to me...which obviously makes sence and all-but sometimes it just blows your mind a little bit to try and look at something you've never had to think about at all from the opposite point of view.
'Witch' family killed in India
Four members of a family have died after being attacked by villagers who said they were practising witchcraft in India's north-eastern state of Assam.
Police said that the four, including two women, were stoned by the villagers and may have been buried alive.
The killings in a remote village involved Santhal tribal people.
Such killings are common among immigrant tribespeople whose ancestors were brought to work the tea gardens in West Bengal and Assam by the British.
They are mostly common in the communities of Santhal, Oraon and Munda tribespeople.
'Evil spell'
One of the victims, Lakhan Majhi, 65, was asked to face a "public trial" on Tuesday evening at Koilajuli Milanpur village in Assam.
Hundreds of his neighbours blamed him for casting an evil spell on a villager who died after getting sick.
Then Majhi, his wife, son and daughter-in-law were brutally attacked with stones and bricks.
Police said the four were dragged to a nearby jungle and buried alive.
More than 500 people have been killed in Assam - and half as many in neighbouring West Bengal - in the past few years because their neighbours thought they were witches.
A study on these killings by a Bengal police officer, Asit Baran Choudhury, suggests that most of those accused of practising witchcraft and then killed are "isolated families" with some landed property.
He says most of those killed are widows.
"Powerful people in the community target them to acquire the land," says the study.
But in some cases, whole families are killed because they have challenged the authority of the community elders.
Police say that was perhaps the motive behind the attack on the Majhis in Assam's Milanpur village on Tuesday.
Villages such as Milanpur have little education and healthcare provision, lack electricity and safe drinking water, and face rampant disease.
*Another witch hunt from a completely different part of the world. Apparently these things are more common than I would have thought...not that I've spent much time thinking about it up till now.
'Non-planet' Pluto gets new class
"Plutoid" is the word of the moment for astronomers.
It is the new classification that has been sanctioned for the object that was formerly known as the "ninth planet".
It is nearly two years since the International Astronomical Union (IAU) stripped Pluto of its former status as a "proper" planet.
Now an IAU committee, meeting in Oslo, has suggested that small, nearly spherical objects orbiting beyond Neptune should carry the "plutoid" tag.
As astronomy's official nomenclature organisation, the IAU must approve all new names and classifications.
Its decision at the 2006 General Assembly to demote Pluto from "planet" to "dwarf planet" caused an international furore.
Pluto's relegation was felt necessary because new telescope technologies had begun to reveal far-off objects that rivalled the world in size.
Without a new classification, these discoveries raised the prospect that textbooks could soon be talking about 50 or more "planets" in the Solar System.
That prospect proved too much for IAU members who took the historic decision to redefine the Solar System to have just eight major worlds - Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
They relegated Pluto to a grouping that includes Ceres (the largest asteroid), and Eris, an object slightly larger than Pluto that orbits even further out from the Sun in an icy region known as the Kuiper Belt.
The IAU's Committee on Small Body Nomenclature has now decided that dwarf planets that move beyond Neptune should be placed in a new sub-category, the plutoid.
More plutoids
In a statement released on Tuesday, the IAU further explained the plutoid definition as celestial bodies that "have sufficient mass for their self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that they assume a hydrostatic equilibrium (near-spherical) shape, and that have not cleared [their orbits of debris].
"The two known and named plutoids are Pluto and Eris. It is expected that more plutoids will be named as science progresses and new discoveries are made."
The plutoids will also need to have a minimum brightness.
Ceres will not be considered a plutoid because of its position in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
The classification will not placate those incensed by Pluto's demotion.
Alan Stern, a former Nasa space sciences chief and principal investigator on a mission to Pluto, was scathing in his condemnation of the IAU.
"It's just some people in a smoke-filled room who dreamed it up," he told the Associated Press. "Plutoids or haemorrhoids, whatever they call it. This is irrelevant."
* http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7449735.stm "It's just some people in a smoke-filled room who dreamed it up," he told the Associated Press. "Plutoids or haemorrhoids, whatever they call it. This is irrelevant." ~ Isn't this true of most things?