Yusef Mehrdad and Sadrullah Fazeli Zare were the people hanged. They were arrested in May 2020 and sentenced to death in April 2021 for running online Anti-Islam groups and channels.

What is Blasphemy?

Blasphemy is the action or offense of speaking sacrilegiously about God or sacred things; profane talk.

Why did Iran hanged two people convicted of blasphemy?

The authorities convicted both after they were found to be members of a Telegram channel titled “Critique of Superstition and Religion,” according to the US Commission of International Religious Freedom.

The member of the Telegram channel allegedly shared opinions insulting Islam. The US Commission on International Religious Freedom claimed that one member of the telegram channel allegedly said that they set religious books on fire. Iran’s state-run AlAlam said Mehrdad was filmed burning the Quran.

After the arrest of Zera and Mehrdad, they were denied family visits and phone calls for eight months. Because of this, Mehrdad reportedly went on hunger strike in February 2022 to protest to authorities for refusing him permission to make phone calls.

The United Nations expert published a statement in August regarding this matter,” Such state-sanctioned intolerance furthers extremism and violence. We call on the Iranian authorities to de-criminalize blasphemy and take meaningful steps to ensure the right to freedom of religion or belief.”

The execution of these two come days after the execution of a dual Swedish-Iranian national, Habib Chaab, who was convicted for leading a national Arab separatist group accused of attacks in Iran.

There was a joint report from Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) and the France-based Together Against the Death Penalty (ECPM) revealed that there was an increase of 75% executions from last year. It was the highest number of executions in the Islamic republic since 2015.

The report found there was a “surge” of executions in Iran following the death of 22-year old Mahsa Amini in police custody in September. Amini’s death sparked a months-long national uprising, which was eventually quashed by a brutal police crackdown.

Category: News

North Korea says dispatches missiles. North Korea said on Monday that its new missile dispatches mimicked strikes on South Korea and the U.S. as the two nations held a “hazardous conflict drill,” while the South said it had recuperated pieces of a North Korean missile close to its coast.

Last week, North Korea test-discharged numerous missiles, including a potentially bombed intercontinental long-range missile (ICBM) and many cannons shells into the ocean, as South Korea and the U.S. completed six-day air bores that finished on Saturday.

The North’s military said the “Cautious Tempest” practices were an “open incitement focused on purposefully heightening the pressure” and “a risky conflict drill of exceptionally high forceful nature.”

The North’s military said it had directed exercises mimicking assaults on air bases and airplanes and a significant South Korean city to “crush the foes’ determined conflict madness.”

The whirlwind of rocket dispatches incorporated the most ridiculous in a solitary day. It came during a record year of rocket testing by atomic-equipped North Korea.

South Korean and U.S. authorities have likewise said that Pyongyang has made specialized arrangements to test an atomic gadget, whenever it first did such beginning around 2017.

Senior representatives from the U.S., Japan, and South Korea talked by telephone on Sunday. They criticized the new tests, including the “wild” send-off of a rocket that arrived off South Korea’s coast last week, per a U.S. State Office explanation.

An authority at South Korea’s Joint Heads of Staff said on Monday that a South Korean boat had recuperated garbage accepted to be essential for that North Korean short-range, long-range rocket (SRBM). It was whenever a North Korean long-range missile arrived close to South Korean waters.

The authority said that the South Korean Naval force salvage vessel utilized a submerged test to recuperate the parts being examined.

Questioned Cases

The North Korean military said it terminated two “vital” journey rockets on Nov. 2 toward the waters off South Korea’s Ulsan, the southeastern beachfront city lodging a thermal energy station and enormous production line parks.

South Korean authorities called that case “false” and said they had followed no rockets nearby.

Examiners expressed a portion of the photographs delivered by North Korean state media appeared to be reused from dispatches before in the year.

The tasks likewise incorporated a send-off of two “strategic long-range rockets stacked with scattering warheads,” a trial of an “extraordinary utilitarian warhead deadening the activity order arrangement of the foe,” and a “hard and fast battle foray” including 500 warrior jets, as per an assertion conveyed by the authority KCNA news organization.

Five hundred warriors would address pretty much every devoted battle airplane in the North’s stock, which appears to be far-fetched given many are 40-80-year-old airframes and not all are useful or kept in the dynamic armada, said Joseph Dempsey, a guard scientist at the Global Foundation for Vital Examinations.

“(The) 500 figure appears to be misrepresented or, if nothing else, misdirecting,” he said in a post on Twitter.

The General Staff of the North’s Korean Individuals’ Military (KPA) blamed Seoul and Washington for inspiring a “more unsteady showdown” and promised to counter their drills with “maintained steadfast and overpowering down-to-earth military measures.”

“The more tenaciously the foes’ provocative military moves proceed, the more completely and pitilessly the KPA will counter them,” it said in the explanation.

NEW MISSILE?

Investigators said that the photographs delivered by state media seemed to show a formerly unreported new sort or variation of ICBM.

“It’s not unequivocal in their assertion, but rather the plan doesn’t compare to one we’ve seen previously,” said Ankit Panda, a rocket master at the Carnegie Gift for Worldwide Harmony.

He said the send-off shown may have been a formative stage for assessing rocket subsystems, including perhaps a vehicle for various freely targetable reemergence vehicles (MIRVs), which permit a solitary rocket to drop atomic warheads on multiple targets.

“This is most certainly an ICBM-size rocket,” Panda said.

George William Herbert, an assistant lecturer at the Middle for Limitation Review and a missile specialist, said the pictures showed what had all the earmarks of being a new nosecone on North Korea’s Hwasong-15 ICBM, which was first tried in 2017.

The nosecone has an alternate shape and seems more significant than needed for the 200-to 300-kiloton atomic gadget displayed in state media and tried in 2017, he said.

Herbert said the shape is more appropriate for a solitary enormous warhead than different, more modest warheads like a MIRV.

Kim has required the advancement of both bigger atomic warheads and more modest ones, which could be utilized in MIRVs or for strategic weapons.

READ: Iran provides drones to Russia as the war against Ukraine continues

A tricycle driver urinating on a vacant lot in Sitio Sangi, Barangay Pajo, Lapu-Lapu City discovered the abandoned female infant near the airbase on Saturday afternoon, July 23, 2022.  

The said infant was brought to the Carjay Lapu-Lapu City Hospital in Cebu where she was given medical care. Medical personnel said that the baby had insect bites and sepsis.

Lapu-Lapu City Mayor Junard “Ahong: Chan has suggested putting the infant up for adoption if the City Social Welfare and Development fails to find the child’s mother.

Mayor Chan said on facebook,“Kung pakyas sila sa pagsuta niini, ajong suhestiyon nga pangitaan na lang siya og mga tawong mo-amuma ug tinuod nga mopangga kaniya aron modako siya nga usa ka bililhong indibidwal”.

Mayor Chan said he was angry and hurt at the same time, thinking that the mother managed to leave her child quickly while other couples have been longing to produce their offspring.

However, he added that she sympathized also the mother as he could not discount the possibility that the mother could have abandoned her child due to difficulty in life or she could have been suffering from some form of mental illness like depression.

READ: Shanghai Takes Biggest Steps Toward Reopening In Two Months

On Monday, the White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said that Iran is believed to be providing several hundred unmannered aerial vehicles (colloquially known as drones) to Russia.

The US intelligence suggests Iran will provide Russia with hundreds of drones to boost its war against Ukraine, Sulivan told the reporters on Monday.

“Our information indicates that the Iranian government is preparing to provide Russia with up to several hundred UAVs on an expedited timeline,” Sullivan said.

Sullivan also said Iran was preparing to train Russian forces on drone use earlier this month. 

Sullivan’s revelation of new intelligence-which Biden, the US, and other Western democracies have used to significant effect against Putin and Russia – comes as the war drags on and Russia continues to gain ground in Ukraine.

Russia has fallen well short of its initial goal of invading and capturing Ukraine within only weeks of its launch at the end of February.

According to Sullivan, Vladimir Putin failed to do his plans on the Ukraine invasion.

The US public support to Ukraine against the invasion from Russia was solid at the beginning but has tailed off a bit as the war has continued and energy prices ticked up. They called it “Putin’s price hike.”

READ: Abandoned Female Infant Rescued by a Tricycle Driver in Lapu-Lapu City, Cebu

Shanghai Takes Biggest Steps Toward Reopening in Two Months. Shanghai Takes Biggest Steps Toward Reopening in Two Months. Shanghai will let people in areas deemed low risk for Covid-19 leave their housing compounds, as the city moves to dismantle the last remaining restrictions that confined most of its 25 million residents to their homes for two months.   

The financial hub will resume taxi and ride hailing services and allow cars onto roads in the low-risk areas, the municipal government said in a statement on Monday. Bus, subway and ferry services will also resume in an orderly manner from Wednesday.

The easing comes as Shanghai’s worst outbreak of the pandemic wanes, with just 31 Covid cases, all in government-run isolation centers, reported for Monday. The measures, which come two weeks after the city started exiting its punishing lockdown, lay the groundwork for a fuller return to normalcy, even as China remains committed to a Covid policy that poses the risk of harsh restrictions on movement in any place where an outbreak flares. 

Shanghai residents reacted to the news with cheers and songs from their apartments, with some setting off fireworks from their balconies to celebrate. Social media platforms, including WeChat, were flooded with messages and comments about the easing, with some Shanghainese discussing where and when they would meet for drinks or meals together, although dining-in is still banned for most restaurants around the city. Many factories and businesses are still subject to restrictions on how they can operate. 

While Shanghai started to ease movement restrictions earlier this month, millions of residents found they were still confined to their apartment blocks or allowed out only briefly as neighborhood committees around the city imposed strict and arbitrary curbs amid concern about a rebound in cases. 

The latest easing comes on the heels of a steady decline in new cases in Shanghai. Infections fell to 67 on Sunday, about half the level of the day before. Earlier this month, the local government said it’s aiming for the city to return to normal life by the middle or end of June.

With nearly all of the recent new cases found in government-mandated quarantine instead of the community, the latest easing announcement will mean the end of the lockdown for most of the city’s residents. The lengthy confinement has sparked clashes between residents and police over the past two months.

Beijing is also seeing a declining caseload, with 18 new Covid infections reported for Monday. The capital, which avoided a full lockdown, has started easing some curbs on movement and resumed some public transport. 

Still, the threat of more curbs remains as long as China persists with its Covid Zero approach. Policy makers at the national level and in Shanghai have unveiled various tax breaks and stimulus measures aimed at reinvigorating the world’s second-largest economy amid the disruption to manufacturers and industry from lockdowns. 

Shanghai has pushed local enterprises to resume productions and announced accelerated approvals for property projects and incentives for car buyers among other moves.

READ: Iran provides drones to Russia as the war against Ukraine continues