Iranian protesters have gathered in the streets of Shiraz and Behbahan, chanting slogans against the country's establishment.

Social-media users on July 16 called for nationwide demonstrations at 7:00 p.m. local time against a court decision to uphold death sentences against three men who participated in protests last year.

Videos shared on social media purportedly showed protesters in Behbahan, in the southwestern province of Khuzestan, and in Shiraz, the capital of southwestern Fars Province, shouting slogans against the death sentences handed to Amir Hossein Moradi, Saeed Tamjidi, and Mohammad Rajabi.


The Reuters news agency quoted witnesses as saying security forces fired tear gas to disperse the demonstrators in Behbahan.

Meanwhile, an increased presence of security forces was reported in the streets of the capital, Tehran, and several other cities.

On July 14, Iran's judiciary said the Supreme Court had upheld the death sentences against Moradi, 25, Tamjidi, 27, and Rajabi, 25, for criminal actions during protests in November sparked by a hike in gasoline prices.

The decision sparked a surge of online protests against the sentences, with the hashtag #Don't_Execute in Persian trending globally on Twitter, being used more than 7 million times.

Bubba Wallace, the only black driver in NASCAR's elite racing series, is speaking out against the media narrative that the sport's fanbase is racist, defusing race-related controversy that has surrounded him since last month.

"We always want to pay attention to the negative, but the narrative that's been out there now is saying all NASCAR fans are racist and whatnot, and that's totally not true," Wallace said late Thursday in an interview on the Desus & Mero talk show on Showtime. He added that he has socialized and drank beer with fans from Alabama to Michigan and was always made to feel welcome.

A trusted employee of tech CEO and investor Fahim Saleh was arrested on Friday in his boss' slaying and dismemberment on the Lower East Side — with sources saying the motive involved a broken promise to repay $100,000 in stolen cash.

Tyrese Haspil, 21, was charged with second-degree murder over the grisly slaying inside Saleh's $2.2 million East Houston Street apartment, NYPD Chief of Detectives Rodney Harrison said during a brief afternoon news conference.

Haspil worked as Saleh's "executive assistant" and handled the international entrepreneur's "finances and personal matters. It is also believed that he owed the victim a significant amount of money."

Israeli occupation forces (IOF) on Thursday evening arrested Palestinian physicist and astronomer Emad al-Barghouti, 53, at a checkpoint near Anata town northeast of Jerusalem.

Al-Barghouti is an ex-prisoner who was arrested by the IOF in December 2015 while he was on his way to take part in an academic conference in the UAE through al-Karama crossing with Jordan.

Al-Barghouti was interrogated and kept in detention for weeks over his participation in demonstrations condemning the Israeli military assault on the Gaza Strip in 2014.

The Palestinian scientist was re-arrested in 2016 over anti-Israel Facebook posts and released after two months of detention following a solidarity campaign by many international academics.

The city council in Sitka, Alaska has decided to remove a statue of Alexander Baranov, the explorer and first governor of Russian Alaska. The resolution lists a number of serious accusations against the man.

Baranov worked for the Russian American Company, which was the vehicle for the Russian government's effort to expand into the Americas. For almost three decades he was the de facto governor of Russian colonies on the continent. Sitka - called Novoarkhangelsk by its Russian founders - served as his capital.

On Tuesday, Sitka's city council decided it no longer wanted a statue of Baranov to greet visitors to the city. The bronze sitting effigy was given to the city in 1989 to commemorate the man's impact on its history and the rapid commercial development it experienced under his governance. The council took a different view of Baranov's role, however.

Argentina is trying to solve a medical mystery after 57 sailors were infected with the coronavirus after 35 days at sea, despite the entire crew testing negative before leaving port. The Echizen Maru fishing trawler returned to port after some of its crew began exhibiting symptoms typical of COVID-19, the health ministry for the southern Tierra del Fuego province said Monday.

According to the ministry, 57 sailors, out of 61 crew members, were diagnosed with the virus after undergoing a new test.

However, all of the crew members had undergone 14 days of mandatory quarantine at a hotel in the city of Ushuaia. Prior to that, they had negative results, the ministry said in a statement.

Two of the other sailors have tested negative, and two others are awaiting test results, the province's emergency operations committee said. Two sailors were hospitalized.

An unsanctioned large-scale rally has taken place in Khabarovsk, the largest city in Russia's Far East. Crowds again took to the streets of downtown to protest the detention of Governor Sergey Furgal on contract-murder charges.

Furgal, a highly popular local politician and member of Russia's Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR) was arrested earlier this month on suspicion of orchestrating the murder of business rivals back in the 2000s. Shortly after he was detained and transferred to Moscow to face official charges, several massive rallies rocked Khabarovsk, a city of more than 600,000 people.

This Saturday, people flocked to the streets again, holding banners that voiced support for Furgal, demanding his release or what, they said, should be a fair trial on Khabarovsk soil.

Goya's Bob Unanue "should be able to speak his mind," said Papa John's pizza chain founder John Schnatter while discussing the recent controversy over the Goya Foods CEO's positive comments about President Trump at a White House event.

Schnatter told Just the News in an interview:

"Everybody on the left keeps preaching diversity, unless it's diversity of thought, diversity of philosophy, or diversity of ideology. And if you don't think a certain way, then you get persecuted. That's not diversity."

I never thought I'd see the day when publicly wearing a muzzle would constitute a proof of virtue in the same country whose government, less than twenty years ago, rationalized the bloody invasion of Afghanistan as a way of saving women from veiling their faces.

But then, I never thought I'd hear American liberals proudly denounce supporters of the US Constitution as a "death cult," nor that I'd actually start to find Donald Trump sounding almost reasonable.

But at least there's one thing we can all be sure about: "mainstream" news media, busily cheerleading for the death of freedom, will continue to gush with absurdities, self-contradictions and victim-shaming memes in their propaganda war to Keep America Gagged. The Bill of Rights (in case you haven't noticed) is history; today, we demonstrate our patriotism by creeping around hiding our faces. Dissenters need not apply.

If you think I'm exaggerating, I suspect you haven't been paying attention. Recently I had the poor judgment to turn on National Public Radio for about an hour, under the impression that I was going to learn something about the day's news.

I could have saved myself the trouble. During the hour in question, I learned nothing at all about the presidential election campaign (now in its final months), nothing about the tens of millions of my fellow citizens whose jobs have been snatched away by government fiat, nothing about climate change, nuclear arms buildups, international refugees or growing worldwide poverty - nothing even about the intensification of air and water pollution authorized by recent federal regulation, although pollution kills an estimated 100,000 Americans every year.

Imagine a large grizzly bear is terrorizing your neighborhood. You have a powerful bear gun and potent bear spray that will make the bear go away or allow you to eliminate it if it attacks you. But your government tells you not to use those tools. Instead, they insist you camouflage yourself, hunker down, and hope the bear doesn't get you.

That about sums up Covid-19 in America. We have powerful methods for getting rid of the virus if one gets a bad infection, but instead we're told to wear masks and stay six feet apart. Oh, and no large gatherings, either - unless you're protesting.

Let me first briefly discuss reliable tools for getting rid of a Covid infection, and then we'll examine the efficacy of masks.

Read more here.