Germany continues to overcompensate:

A 68-year-old real estate broker in Germany is paying dearly for insulting another man in a dispute over a parking space.

Die Welt newspaper says a Hamburg court fined the defendant $75,312 Thursday for using an offensive word.

The paper said the defendant had jumped the line for a parking space before the argument erupted.

It said the fine was based on the mans estimated monthly income.

Die Welt quoted the judge as saying it was probably the biggest fine ever handed down in Hamburg for an insult.

The man’s lawyer denied he had used the insult, but said that if he had “it would have been so quiet that nobody would have heard.”

Report: German Court Fines Man $75,000 for Insult

In a move that has prompted a demand for a UN investigation by Iran’s most celebrated human rights campaigner, the Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi, 36 universities have announced that 77 BA and BSc courses in the coming academic year will be “single gender” and effectively exclusive to men.

It follows years in which Iranian women students have outperformed men, a trend at odds with the traditional male-dominated outlook of the country’s religious leaders. Women outnumbered men by three to two in passing this year’s university entrance exam.

Senior clerics in Iran’s theocratic regime have become concerned about the social side-effects of rising educational standards among women, including declining birth and marriage rates.

Anger as Iran bans women from universities – Telegraph

Americans are throwing out nearly every other bite of food, wasting up to 40% of the country’s supply each year – a mass of uneaten provisions worth $165 billion, according to a new report from the Natural Resources Defense Council.

An average family of four squanders $2,275 in food each year, or 20 pounds per person per month, according to the nonprofit and nonpartisan environmental advocacy group.

Food waste is the largest single portion of solid waste cramming American landfills. Since the 1970s, the amount of uneaten fare that is dumped has jumped 50%. The average American trashes 10 times as much food as a consumer in Southeast Asia, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Americans toss out as much as 40% of their food, study says – latimes.com

Nike Inc has come up with new rules for retailers, prompted by unruly crowds outside stores selling its shoes, the Wall Street Journal reported.

According to a company memo reviewed by the paper, the worlds largest sportswear maker told sporting-goods stores that they will not be allowed to pre-sell or take reservations for new shoes.

The retailers, which include Foot Locker Inc and Dicks Sporting Goods Inc , will also have to give up midnight releases of shoes that had prompted customers to camp outside and stampede stores, the paper reported.

“Retailers should assess what measures are necessary to secure the store and ensure the safety of personnel and consumers,” the Nike memo said, according to the Journal.

Nike sets new rules to beef up store, customer safety: WSJ – Yahoo! News

Got kicks? Every Detroit student who shows up on the cash-crucial Student Count Day will be able to answer “yes” thanks to a donation from Bob’s Classic Kicks in midtown.

BCK, 4717 Woodward, made an arrangement with the school district to give away a free pair of black leather Nikes to every student who comes to class on Oct. 3, the day when students are counted and their numbers used as the basis for per-pupil funding from the state and federal government.

The more bodies in class, the more money schools have all year.

Detroit Store Tries To Draw Kids To School With New Shoes « CBS Detroit

Beirut police are reported to have forced 36 men arrested in an adult film cinema to undergo invasive medical tests to assess if they had sex.

According to Box Turtle Bulletin, the men were arrested at the Plaza Cinema in the city of Beirut on 28 July. The venue is known as a cruising spot for gay men.

Among the arrested suspects, was the owner of the cinema, reported the Lebanese Murr TV channel.

Footage of the raid showed police wielding large automatic weapons to take on what the channel called “prostitution and abnormalities in the cinema”.

Local LGBT activists from the Helem group later discovered from the arrested men that police had allegedly forced them to be medically examined for signs of anal sex.

Those who did not appear to have had sex were apparently released. It is not known if any of the men are still being held.

Activists were surprised by the raid as Beirut has traditionally been one of the more tolerant cities in the Middle East, with a significant LGBT community.

It is believed that the raid was in reaction to a Lebanese talk show host, Joe Maalouf, launching an anti-gay campaign on his show; referring to the cinema on air and accusing the police of “protecting perverts”.

Lebanese Police Subject Men to ‘Anal Probes’

It’s the latest prescription for extreme ultra-Orthodox Jewish men who shun contact with the opposite sex: Glasses that blur their vision, so they don’t have to see women they consider to be immodestly dressed.

In an effort to maintain their strictly devout lifestyle, the ultra-Orthodox have separated the sexes on buses, sidewalks and other public spaces in their neighborhoods. Their interpretation of Jewish law forbids contact between men and women who are not married.

Walls in their neighborhoods feature signs exhorting women to wear closed-necked, long-sleeved blouses and long skirts. Extremists have accosted women they consider to have flouted the code.

Now they’re trying to keep them out of clear sight altogether.

The ultra-Orthodox community’s unofficial “modesty patrols” are selling glasses with special blur-inducing stickers on their lenses. The glasses provide clear vision for up to a few meters so as not to impede movement, but anything beyond that gets blurry — including women. It’s not known how many have been sold.

In Israel, new modesty glasses for Orthodox Jewish men blur women out of their line of sight – NY Daily News

Islamists in control of a town in northern Mali stoned a couple to death after accusing them of having children outside of marriage, a local official who was one of several hundred witnesses to the killings said Monday.

The official said the bearded Islamists, armed with Kalashnikov rifles, brought the couple into the center of the town of Aguelhok from about 12 miles away in the countryside. The young man and woman were forced into holes about four feet deep, with their heads protruding, and then stoned to death at about 5 a.m. Sunday, the official said.

“They put them into the holes, and then they started throwing big rocks, until they were dead,” the official said, speaking by satellite phone from the remote desert town near the Algerian border.

“It was horrible,” he said, noting that the woman had moaned and cried out and that her partner had yelled something indistinct during the attack. “It was inhuman. They killed them like they were animals.”

Islamists in North Mali Stone Couple to Death – NYTimes.com

Abdi Jeylani Malaq Marshale, a comedian known for mocking Al-Qaeda linked Shebab insurgents in Mogadishu, was killed just after leaving Kulmiye radio station.

He was considered a leader of the Somali comedy scene and assisted in programs which sought to prevent young Somalis from joining the insurgents.

Marshale was known for airing dramas making fun of the extremist Shebab and for participating in youth advocacy programmes aimed at preventing young Somalis from joining the insurgents.

So far in 2012, at least one Somali journalist has been killed each month.

Somali comedian who poked fun at Islamists shot dead

The District is paying 305 students with poor academic and behavioral records to attend summer school, The Washington Examiner has learned.

The rising ninth-graders are earning $5.25 an hour to participate in the “Summer Bridge” program, which targets students identified by D.C. Public Schools as less likely than their peers to graduate high school within four years.

The 95 students who voluntarily signed up for the summer school program will receive half of an elective credit. But to fill the 400-student session with at-risk students, DCPS reached out to the Department of Employment Services. More than 300 students flagged by DCPS and who had signed up for the Summer Youth Employment Program were told that school would be their jobs this summer.

D.C. Public Schools is turning its attention toward not just graduating high-school students, but graduating them on time. Only 53 percent of DCPS students graduate high school within four years. In addition to the Summer Bridge program, DCPS introduced a program this summer for English-language learners who failed English their freshman year of high school. Instead of retaking English 1 and graduating in five years, these rising sophomores are taking the course over the summer so they can stay on track.

Melissa Salmanowitz, a spokeswoman for Chancellor Kaya Henderson, said DCPS officials are going to study this year’s results, with the intention of expanding the program next summer.

At-large Councilman Michael A. Brown, chairman of the committee that oversaw the summer jobs program until June, said there has been some pushback from residents who question whether paying students one summer leads them to expect rewards for showing up during the school year.

“That’s a completely legitimate argument,” Brown said. “It is a very, very, extremely justified, debatable issue and I don’t think there’s a right answer.”

This summer isn’t the first time the city has paid students to learn. The District allowed a Harvard University group to pay about 3,000 middle-school students up to $100 a month for good grades during the 2008-09 and 2009-10 school years. Grades overall didn’t improve significantly.

“What would a rising ninth grader do at an internship? Probably mundane tasks, so maybe sitting in a classroom has potential for higher returns,” Amundson said.

Handing paychecks to students for learning could, however, be a “slippery slope,” said local political consultant Chuck Thies.

“How much will we pay going forward, and who will we pay, and what’s the cutoff to get paid?” Thies asked. “It’s critical that we get at-risk students and underperforming students and failing students into the program, but I don’t think incentivizing them with money sends the right message.”

D.C. students being paid for summer school | WashingtonExaminer.com