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May 12, 2023, 6:48 PM ET
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An Iranian draft law that would set new penalties for women not wearing a headscarf in public has sparked heated debate within the Islamic republic's leadership as more women flout the country's strict dress code.
Since the aftermath of the Islamic revolution of 1979, women have been required to cover their hair and neck in public places, with offenders facing fines or prison terms of up to two months.
But a growing number are defying the law and appearing bareheaded in the streets.
The trend accelerated during the nationwide protests sparked by the September death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman arrested for allegedly violating the law.
The protests rocked Iran, provoking a crackdown by authorities that claimed the lives of hundreds of people, including dozens of security personnel, and saw thousands more arrested.
Iran's conservatives, who dominate the country's parliament and leadership, have passionately defended the dress code and believe relaxing rules would begin a process leading to profound shifts in "social norms".
But with many Iranians demanding change, in May the judiciary and the government proposed a "Support for the Culture of Hijab and Chastity" bill, to "protect society" and "strengthen family life".
The text proposes increased fines for "any person removing their veil in public places or on the internet" but withdraws the threat of a prison sentence.
"This bill reduces the removal of the hijab from a felony to a misdemeanor, similar to a traffic violation but with heavier fines," sociologist Abbas Abdi told AFP.
After Amini's death and the subsequent protests, society "no longer accepts that we imprison a woman because she does not wear the veil", he said.
Since the protests, authorities have imposed a series of measures to enforce Iran's strict dress code, including the closure of businesses whose staff do not conform with the rules and installing cameras in public places to track down offenders.
In recent days, at least three officials have been sacked or arrested for failing to prevent unveiled women from entering historic sites.
- 'Not dissuasive enough' -
Under the proposed law, the text of which has been published in government-affiliated media, offenders will first receive a warning text message from the police.
A second breach will incur fines of between five million and 60 million rials (around $10 to $120), a large sum for many Iranians. The law would also provide for other penalties, including the confiscation of a woman's vehicle for up to 10 days.
Defending the bill, judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei stressed the need to avoid polarizing society, saying he understood the "concerns of believers" supportive of the dress code.
As the bill awaits examination by lawmakers, it faces accusations of not being tough enough from ultra-conservatives, an influential bloc in the current parliament.
Relaxing punishments for violations will see "the expansion of a repugnant phenomenon" by "removing legal barriers" for women not wearing a veil, the ultra-conservative newspaper Kayhan said.
Those supporting the law "do not know that the enemy" seeks to "destroy the family as an institution and ultimately, to attack the foundations of the Islamic system" by removing headscarves, the newspaper said.
Social networks and foreign media, particularly television channels broadcasting in Persian, are calling for "social disobedience", according to some ultra-conservatives.
Within Iran's leadership "there is no consensus on the hijab", as some favor repression, while others "believe that other means must be tried", the sociologist Abdi said.
"The bill satisfies neither the supporters of compulsory hijab nor, of course, the supporters of the freedom to cover up or not."
A similar situation developed in the 1990s with a law prohibiting the use of satellite dishes, he said.
"It was only implemented for a while before it was dropped."
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US aviation officials on Monday were investigating the fatal crash of an "unresponsive" private plane that strayed over the nation's capital and prompted the scrambling of F-16 fighter jets.
The Cessna Citation slammed into mountainous terrain Sunday afternoon in Virginia, some 170 miles (275 kilometers) southwest of Washington, killing all four people aboard, officials said.
The crash came shortly after the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) dispatched F-16s to intercept an "unresponsive" Cessna 560 Citation V aircraft over Washington, whose airspace is tightly restricted.
According to The Washington Post, the pilot of one of the F-16s could see the pilot of the Cessna slumped over in the cockpit -- suggesting a loss of consciousness due to depressurization of the aircraft.
NORAD said flares were deployed to try to draw the attention of the pilot but there was no response and the private plane eventually crashed near the George Washington National Forest in Virginia.
"NORAD attempted to establish contact with the pilot until the aircraft crashed," it said in a statement.
The F-16s triggered a sonic boom across Washington and its suburbs, startling residents and rattling windows for miles.
"The NORAD aircraft were authorized to travel at supersonic speeds and a sonic boom may have been heard by residents of the region," NORAD said.
Aviation experts speculated that the pilot of the Cessna may have become incapacitated due to a depressurization of the aircraft, which can cause a rapid loss of consciousness at altitudes above 10,000 feet (3,000 meters).
A loss of cabin pressure was blamed for a high-profile 1999 Learjet accident that killed golfer Payne Stewart and four other people.
In that case, the Learjet, which was on a flight from Florida to Texas, flew for thousands of miles on autopilot before eventually running out of fuel and crashing in South Dakota.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and National Transportation Safety Board said they were investigating Sunday's accident.
Virginia State Police said first responders reached the crash site near the town of Staunton by foot some four hours after the Cessna plummeted to the ground.
"No survivors were located," police said in a statement.
The Cessna had taken off from Elizabethton, Tennessee, bound for Long Island MacArthur Airport in New York, the FAA said.
But it turned around after flying over Long Island and headed back south over Washington and into Virginia, climbing as high as 34,000 feet according to flight tracking website Flightradar24.
The Post said contact with the plane was lost about 15 minutes after its departure from Elizabethton and the aircraft may have continued to fly for hours on autopilot before exhausting its fuel and crashing.
- 'My family is gone' -
President Joe Biden, who was at the White House and also played golf Sunday, was briefed on the incident, an official said without specifying whether any emergency precautions were implemented.
US authorities have yet to officially identify those on board, but comments by two relatives of people believed to have been on the plane provided some information.
Public records showed the aircraft was registered to Florida-based company Encore Motors of Melbourne, whose owner John Rumpel told the Post his daughter, a grandchild and her nanny were on board.
In response to condolence messages on her Facebook page, Rumpel's wife, Barbara, wrote on the platform Sunday night: "My family is gone, my daughter and granddaughter."
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The president signed, over the weekend, legislation that would lift the cap on borrowing just shy of the deadline, after which the United States would have defaulted on its debt for the first time. The drama took attention away from the latest jobs report released Friday. Firms added nearly 440,000 jobs in May.
It “marked the 29th straight month of job growth, according to data released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics,” reported the Post’s Lauren Kaori Gurley. “Despite some slowing, the labor market continues to buoy the US economy through enormous uncertainty.” She added: “Economists had predicted a much smaller number of jobs created in May — around 180,000.”
The impact of the latest jobs report is an occasion for a fresh observation (I hope) – that the further we get into recovering from a deadly once-a-century plague, the less people who know what they are talking about expect it to keep going. The less they expect it to keep going, the more these same people, who are supposed to know what they are talking about, are surprised when it does.
READ MORE: 'Objectively Amazing': Economists cheer 'extraordinarily robust' jobs report
In recent months, jobs reports I have seen have been accompanied by some variation of the word “surprise” – as in job growth continues to be “surprising” or “unexpected.” It continues to “defy predictions.” Or, my favorite bit of bureaucratese, it continues to “exceed data analysts’ economic forecasts.”
I don’t know any more about economics than you do. I don’t want to misrepresent myself. But I do know that things change over time and that our thinking about things has to change along with them. If our thinking does not change, we won’t understand what’s happening now. We will be thinking about how things worked in the past, but not how they are working in the present.
In the past (specifically, the 1970s), the thinking was that high prices caused recession. High prices hurt economically, ergo they hurt politically. Ask some of these people who are supposed to know what they are talking about why Jimmy Carter was a one-term president, and they will likely tell you: inflation.
The Federal Reserve has two equal mandates: prices and jobs. Since the 1970s, however, prices have been the priority. Back then, as it’s doing now, the Fed raised interest rates in response to rising prices. Raising interest rates caused firms to hire less or even lay off workers. This was not an accident. This was intentional. The point was pushing workers onto the unemployment line.
READ MORE: Republicans can’t stop won’t stop hating the poor
Why? Because, back then, the thinking was that the cost of labor was causing everything to cost more. Stop labor costs from rising and you’ll stop the cost of everything else from rising, too. To do that, the Fed kept raising interest rates.
It wasn’t always like this. Before 1980, the federal government used other tools, in particular something called “price controls” that targeted products deemed to be in the national interest, such as gasoline. But since the 1970s, “price controls” have been demonized as communism. To my knowledge, no president since the 1980s has talked seriously about revisiting the use of price controls.
You’ll notice that the Federal Reserve has been raising interest rates. You’ll also notice that firms are not hiring less or laying off more. (Layoffs in the tech sector are the exception, but people who know what they are talking about say that the impact will likely stay in that sector of the economy.) There have been two and a half years of job growth even as interest rates have kept going up.
You’ll notice, too, that the financial press keeps talking about jobs and the economy as if two and a half years of job growth were not supposed to have happened in the face of rising interest rates. Matter of fact, the way they tell the story, we were supposed to be in a recession months ago. Yet here we are.
They also keep putting jobs and prices at odds. Here’s Bloomberg News, after the “surprising” monthly jobs report was released on Friday: “When (and how) will central banks declare some measure of victory over price surges and stop (or even reverse) more than a year of [interest rate] tightening? The Federal Reserve says it’s notched some progress and that the US economy is cooling down. But the job market hasn’t cracked, with payrolls still surging” (my italics).
I don’t know any more about you than you do. What I do know is that things change over time and that our thinking must change along with them. Right now, the thinking is that jobs, not prices, are the problem. Right now, the solution has been that raising interest rates would solve the problem. It’s not solving the problem, though. I suggest it’s because our thinking is outdated.
Perhaps prices are the problem, not jobs.
If we updated our thinking, perhaps we’d no longer be so surprised.
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