Iran suspends two soccer players, and more

last updated 8 January 2015

Iran suspends two soccer players

Iranian officials have fined and indefinitely suspended a pair of pro soccer players for immoral behavior after one patted the other’s buttocks during a goal celebration. Homosexuality is illegal in Iran, and video replays of the televised game clearly showed Persepolis defender Mohammed Nosrati affectionately squeezing the rear end of teammate Sheis Rezaei. “What happened is absolutely not acceptable,” said Jalal Yahyazadeh, a member of parliament, “because it was a very ugly thing.” A judge has recommended that the suspended players receive 74 lashes.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Kate Middleton may be pregnant, says the London Daily Mail. Though she remains reed-thin, the Duchess of Cambridge fueled rumors that she’s with child by wearing a baggy coat at a public appearance in Denmark, and then declining to join her husband, Prince William, in tasting peanut butter being sent to victims of an African famine. Expectant mothers are advised not to eat peanut butter because it might trigger an allergy in their children, royal watchers noted. One onlooker told the Mail, “Kate would not stop touching her tummy. She continually patted it and held her hands against it.”

A cleaning woman damaged a $1 million art installation at a German museum by wiping up what she thought was dirt. Part of the piece, titled When It Starts Dripping From the Ceiling, by the late Martin Kippenberger, was a trough painted to look as if it had been stained by rainwater. The cleaner scrubbed the trough clean, said a museum spokesman, and “it is now impossible to return it to its original state.”