The United States triumphed on the pitch over longtime political adversary Iran on Tuesday in a World Cup match overshadowed by protests raging in Iran and laced with decades of tension between the two countries.

The contest in Qatar between the two nations, which severed diplomatic ties more than 40 years ago, took place under increased security to prevent a flare-up over the anti-government protests across Iran since the death in custody of 22-year-old Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini on Sept. 16.

Qatar, which has strong ties with Washington and friendly relations with Tehran, has staked its reputation on delivering a smooth World Cup, beefing up security at Iran games and banning some items deemed inflammatory, such as Iran’s pre-1979 Islamic revolution flag.

U.S.-Iranian tensions have worsened since 2018 when then-President Donald Trump abandoned an international nuclear deal with Iran. Attempts by President Joe Biden’s administration to revive the 2015 accord have stalled.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, speaking in Romania, played down any link between the match and political tensions and said he hoped the game would “speak for itself”, adding that he would be watching and cheering on his country.

In sporting terms, the 1-0 win for the United States after a first half goal by Christian Pulisic means they progress to the knockout stage, while Iran are out of the competition.

Despite qualification out of Group B being on the line and the geopolitical background, the match was mostly cleanly played with no hard fouls or altercations between the players. When the nations last played in the 1998 World Cup, Iran won 2-1.

For fans attending the first soccer World Cup in the Middle East, or watching across the world, Iran’s domestic politics and its troubled relations with the United States were in focus.

Extra security personnel, some mounted on horseback, patrolled outside the Al Thumama Stadium in Doha before the match while guards at the perimeter made Iranians unfurl their flags before entering. Police were stationed throughout the stadium alongside regular security guards. Some carried batons.

Early in the second half, a group of fans briefly held up letters spelling Mahsa Amini’s name, to applause from Iranian supporters around them. Security personnel took their signs but allowed them to remain in their seats.

A Qatari official said before the match that authorities would ensure all matches were “safe and welcoming for all spectators”. Items that “could increase tensions and risk the safety of fans” would not be permitted.

Gulf Arab monarchies, including Qatar, do not tolerate domestic dissent and protests are rare in the region.

Outside the stadium after the match, Reuters journalists saw stadium security chase two people in a series of scuffles on the stadium’s perimeter.

Three guards pinned one man to the ground, who was wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the words “Women, Life, Freedom,” the central slogan of the Iranian protest movement.

The man repeatedly yelled, “women, life, freedom” as guards were on top of him. An eyewitness told Reuters the altercation began when guards attempted to remove the man’s shirt.

In the other incident, guards chased a man through the stadium area and pushed him back inside.

Tournament security officials and tournament organisers, the Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy, did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment.

In the second half of the match, five members of the Russian activist punk group Pussy Riot stood in the stadium stands wearing green balaclavas and t-shirts that read “Woman Life Freedom.” On the back, the shirts carried the names of people killed in Iran, along with their ages, Nika Nikulshina, a group member told Reuters.

“It’s our gesture of support for Iranian women and we want to highlight that Iran is sending drones to Russia to kill Ukraine. We want to remind everyone that there is not only FIFA and fun, and that there’s a war going on,” she said.

Stadium security removed the balaclavas and, after the match, “politely” escorted the women out of the stadium, said Nikulshina, who invaded the pitch in 2018 during the World Cup Final in Moscow.

Before kick-off, some fans outside the stadium sought to highlight the protests and the Iranian government’s crackdown.

“Everybody should know about this. We don’t have voice in Iran,” said an Iranian living in the United States who gave his name only as Sam.

Speaking by phone from Tehran shortly before kick-off, 21-year-old Elham said she wanted the United States to win because victory for the national squad, known as Team Melli, would be a gift for Iranian authorities.

“This is not my national team. It is not the Melli team, it is the mullahs’ team,” she said.

Under pressure to publicly support protesters at home, the Iranian team declined to sing the national anthem in their first game against England, which they lost 6-2. But they sang it before the second game, a 2-0 victory over Wales, and again on Tuesday.

The protests in Iran pose one of the boldest challenges to the theocracy.

After the Americans won on Tuesday people were chanting “Woman, Life, Freedom” and “Thank you the U.S. team” from rooftops, two sources in Tehran’s Velenjak neighbourhood told Reuters.

Related Galleries:

(WASHINGTON) — The Senate passed bipartisan legislation Tuesday to protect same-sex marriages, an extraordinary sign of shifting national politics on the issue and a measure of relief for the hundreds of thousands of same-sex couples who have married since the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision that legalized gay marriage nationwide.

The bill, which would ensure that same-sex and interracial marriages are enshrined in federal law, was approved 61-36 on Tuesday, including support from 12 Republicans. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said the legislation was “a long time coming” and part of America’s “difficult but inexorable march towards greater equality.”

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

Democrats are moving quickly, while the party still holds the majority in both chambers of Congress, to send the bill to the House and then—they hope—to President Joe Biden’s desk. The bill has gained steady momentum since the Supreme Court’s June decision that overturned the federal right to an abortion, a ruling that included a concurring opinion from Justice Clarence Thomas that suggested same-sex marriage could also come under threat. Bipartisan Senate negotiations got a kick-start this summer when 47 Republicans unexpectedly voted for a House bill and gave supporters new optimism.

The legislation would not force any state to allow same-sex couples to marry. But it would require states to recognize all marriages that were legal where they were performed, and protect current same-sex unions, if the court’s 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision were to be overturned.

That’s a stunning bipartisan endorsement, and evidence of societal change, after years of bitter divisiveness on the issue.

The bill would also protect interracial marriages by requiring states to recognize legal marriages regardless of “sex, race, ethnicity or national origin.”

A new law protecting same-sex marriages would be a major victory for Democrats as they relinquish their two years of consolidated power in Washington, and a massive win for advocates who have been pushing for decades for federal legislation. It comes as the LGBTQ community has faced violent attacks, such as the shooting last weekend at a gay nightclub in Colorado that killed five people and injured at least 17.

“Our community really needs a win, we have been through a lot,” said Kelley Robinson, the incoming president of Human Rights Campaign, which advocates on LGBTQ issues. “As a queer person who is married, I feel a sense of relief right now. I know my family is safe.”

The vote was personal for many senators, too. Schumer said on Tuesday that he was wearing the tie he wore at his daughter’s wedding, “one of the happiest moments of my life.” He also recalled the “harrowing conversation” he had with his daughter and her wife in September 2020 when they heard that liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had passed away. “Could our right to marry be undone?” they asked at the time.

With conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett replacing Ginsburg, the court has now overturned Roe v. Wade and the federal right to an abortion, stoking fears about Obergefell and other rights protected by the court. But sentiment has shifted on same-sex marriage, with more than two-thirds of the public now in support.

Still, Schumer said it was notable that the Senate was even having the debate after years of Republican opposition. “A decade ago, it would have strained all of our imaginations to envision both sides talking about protecting the rights of same-sex married couples,” he said.

Passage came after the Senate rejected three Republican amendments to protect the rights of religious institutions and others to still oppose such marriages. Supporters of the legislation argued those amendments were unnecessary because the bill had already been amended to clarify that it does not affect rights of private individuals or businesses that are currently enshrined in law. The bill would also make clear that a marriage is between two people, an effort to ward off some far-right criticism that the legislation could endorse polygamy.

Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who has been lobbying his fellow GOP senators to support the legislation for months, pointed to the number of religious groups supporting the bill, including the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Some of those groups were part of negotiations on the bipartisan amendment.

“They see this as a step forward for religious freedom,” Tillis says.

The nearly 17-million member, Utah-based faith said in a statement this month that church doctrine would continue to consider same-sex relationships to be against God’s commandments. Yet it said it would support rights for same-sex couples as long as they didn’t infringe upon religious groups’ right to believe as they choose.

Most Republicans still oppose the legislation, saying it is unnecessary and citing concerns about religious liberty. And some conservative groups stepped up opposition in recent weeks, lobbying Republican supporters to switch their votes.

“As I and others have argued for years, marriage is the exclusive, lifelong, conjugal union between one man and one woman, and any departure from that design hurts the indispensable goal of having every child raised in a stable home by the mom and dad who conceived him,” the Heritage Foundation’s Roger Severino, vice president of domestic policy, wrote in a recent blog post arguing against the bill.

In an effort to win the 10 Republican votes necessary to overcome a filibuster in the 50-50 Senate, Democrats delayed consideration until after the midterm elections, hoping that would relieve political pressure on GOP senators who might be wavering.

Eventual support from 12 Republicans gave Democrats the votes they needed.

Along with Tillis, Maine Sen. Susan Collins and Ohio Sen. Rob Portman supported the bill early on and have lobbied their GOP colleagues to support it. Also voting for the legislation in two test votes ahead of passage were Republican Sens. Richard Burr of North Carolina, Todd Young of Indiana, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, Mitt Romney of Utah, Joni Ernst of Iowa, Roy Blunt of Missouri, Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming and Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan of Alaska.

Lummis, one of the more conservative members of the Senate, spoke ahead of the final vote about her “fairly brutal self soul searching” before supporting the bill. She said that she accepts her church’s beliefs that a marriage is between a man and a woman, but noted that the country was founded on the separation of church and state.

“We do well by taking this step, not embracing or validating each other’s devoutly held views, but by the simple act of tolerating them,” Lummis said.

The growing GOP support for the issue is a sharp contrast from even a decade ago, when many Republicans vocally opposed same-sex marriages.

Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin, a Democrat who is the first openly gay senator and has been working on gay rights issues for almost four decades, said this month that the newfound openness from many Republicans on the subject reminds her “of the arc of the LBGTQ movement to begin with, in the early days when people weren’t out and people knew gay people by myths and stereotypes.”

Baldwin, the lead Senate negotiator on the legislation, said that as more individuals and families have become visible, hearts and minds have changed.

“And slowly laws have followed,” she said. “It is history.”

Associated Press writer Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.

NATO allies promised more arms for Kyiv and equipment to help restore Ukrainian power and heat knocked out by Russian strikes, as Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Moscow’s forces were attempting to advance in multiple regions.

Ukrainians on Tuesday fled for bomb shelters after air-raid warning sirens, although the all-clear later sounded across the country. In the eastern Donetsk region Russian forces pounded Ukrainian targets with artillery, mortar and tank fire.

Zelenskiy said the Russian military was also attacking in Luhansk in the east and Kharkiv in the northeast, the latter an area Ukraine recaptured in September.

“The situation at the front is difficult,” Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address. “Despite extremely large losses, the occupiers are still trying to advance” in Donetsk, Luhansk and Kharkiv. And “they are planning something in the south,” he said.

Ukraine regained control of Kherson in the south this month after Russian forces retreated. Reuters could not independently verify the battlefield reports.

Foreign ministers from the NATO alliance, including U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, began a two-day meeting in Bucharest on Tuesday, seeking ways both to keep Ukrainians safe and warm and to sustain Kyiv’s military through a coming winter campaign.

“We need air defence, IRIS, Hawks, Patriots, and we need transformers (for our energy needs),” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told reporters on the sidelines of the NATO meeting, enumerating various Western air defence systems.

“In a nutshell: Patriots and transformers are what Ukraine needs the most.”

Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev warned NATO against providing Ukraine with Patriot missile defence systems and denounced the Atlantic alliance as a “criminal entity” for delivering arms to what he called “Ukrainian fanatics.”

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Russian President Vladimir Putin was “trying to use winter as a weapon of war” as Moscow’s forces lose ground on the battlefield.

U.S. and European officials said ministers would focus in their talks on non-lethal aid such as fuel, medical supplies and winter equipment, as well as on military assistance. Washington said it would provide $53 million to buy power grid equipment.

U.S. President Joe Biden said providing more military assistance for Ukraine was a priority, but Republicans, who take control of Congress’ House of Representatives in January, have talked about pausing the funding, which has surpassed $18 billion.

Russia has been carrying out huge attacks on Ukraine’s electricity transmission and heating infrastructure roughly weekly since October, in what Kyiv and its allies say is a deliberate campaign to harm civilians, a war crime.

In Kyiv, snow fell and temperatures were hovering around freezing as millions in and around the capital struggled to heat their homes. An official with the power company said on Facebook that 985,500 customers in Kyiv were without power, and another electricity provider said the city would have emergency power cuts on Wednesday.

In a brief posting on Telegram, Kherson region governor Yaroslav Yanushevych said on Tuesday electricity had been restored to half of the city of Kherson.

Ukrainian forces struck a power plant in Russia’s Kursk region on Tuesday, causing some electricity outages, Roman Starovoyt, the governor of the region, said on the Telegram messaging app.

Moscow says hurting civilians is not its aim but that their suffering will end only if Kyiv accepts its demands, which it has not spelled out. Although Kyiv says it shoots down most of the incoming missiles, the damage has been accumulating and the impact growing more severe with each strike.

A senior U.S. military official said on Tuesday Russia was firing unarmed cruise missiles that were designed to carry nuclear warheads at targets in Ukraine to try to deplete Kyiv’s stocks of air defences.

The worst barrage so far was on Nov. 23, leaving millions of Ukrainians in cold and darkness. Zelenskiy told Ukrainians at the start of this week to expect another soon that would be at least as damaging.

There are no political talks to end the war. Moscow has annexed Ukrainian territory which it says it will never relinquish; Ukraine says it will fight until it recovers all occupied land.

Kyiv said it wants weapons to help it end the war – by winning it.

Related Galleries:

Skeptical lawmakers from across the political spectrum questioned executives at grocers Kroger Co (KR.N) and Albertsons Companies Inc (ACI.N) on Tuesday about their planned $25 billion merger amid concerns the tie-up could boost already-high food prices.

Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat and chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s antitrust subcommittee, said she worried the deal would mean a loss of competition in groceries, and potentially higher costs, at a time when inflation is already high.

“That’s why you’ve heard concern across the country about this transaction,” she said. The deal will be reviewed by the Federal Trade Commission to ensure it is legal under antitrust law.

Kroger Chief Executive Rodney McMullen sought to allay lawmakers’ worries about the planned purchase of a big rival, noting that the merged firms would still be much smaller than Walmart Inc (WMT.N), the country’s top grocer. “The combined company will remain at number four,” he said.

Stores under the Albertsons umbrella include Balducci’s, Haggen, Kings, Safeway, Star Market, Tom Thumb, United Supermarkets and Vons, among others. Kroger owns Baker’s, Dillons, Fred Meyer, King Soopers, Mariano’s, Pick’n Save and Ralphs.

Klobuchar and Senator Mike Lee, the top Republican on the panel, both pointed to Albertsons’ 2015 purchase of Safeway as a cautionary tale.

In that case, the companies were forced to sell 168 stores to ensure that competition would remain fierce and prices would not rise. The divestiture failed, and Albertsons bought back dozens of stores.

The companies, knowing this new tie-up would be controversial and that antitrust enforcement has become tougher, offered an aggressive plan aimed at resolving concerns when they announced the deal, which would bring nearly 5,000 stores under one corporate umbrella. The grocers said they expected to sell between 100 and 375 stores ideally to outside buyers but could also put them into a new company that would be owned by Albertsons’ shareholders. UBS has said it believes the plan will satisfy antitrust enforcers.

This plan could force the FTC to not only prove in court that the transaction is illegal but that the proposed remedy is inadequate.

Kroger’s deal to buy Albertsons has also been criticized by unions and progressive groups, which have argued that the merger would exacerbate income inequality through job losses and eroding wages and have urged the government to block the deal.

The merger is being discussed at a time when the Biden administration is determined to bring down inflation. U.S. consumer prices rose less than expected in October, pushing the annual increase below 8% for the first time in eight months. Food prices increased 0.6%.

The companies have also been criticized for a plan to give Albertsons’ shareholders a $4 billion dividend payment. A Washington state court put that plan on hold with the next hearing set for Dec. 9. Separately, the attorneys general of Washington, D.C.; California and Illinois have also sued to stop that payment, arguing it would weaken the company’s ability to compete.

Senator Tom Cotton, a conservative Republican, criticized Kroger for the company’s aprons with a design that appeared to support gay pride. Two employees were fired for refusing to wear the apron.

Cotton referred to a dynamic in congressional hearings where conservative lawmakers are more likely to defend corporations, saying that companies that “discriminate” against conservatives “probably shouldn’t ask Republican senators to come and carry the water for them whenever our Democratic friends want to regulate them.”

Being obsessed with controlling what consenting strangers do in their bedrooms, or controlling what women do with their bodies, is perverted behavior. Right wingers like Mike Pence and Ron DeSantis are perverts, and it’s time we start branding them that way.

Whenever I’ve brought up this notion before, some folks have replied by yelling “Yep I bet Pence does some perverted things in his own bedroom!” But that is it not what I’m talking about at all. I couldn’t care less what Pence does in his own bedroom. Nor does he need to be doing anything “perverted” in his own bedroom in order to qualify as a pervert. That’s the entire point.

It’s the mere act of trying to control what others do in their bedrooms, or with their bodies, that makes these right wing politicians perverts. If a guy walking down the street tried to forcibly keep a woman or a gay couple from exercising their most basic personal rights, we’d brand that guy a menace and have him arrested for harassment. Yet when a guy like Pence or DeSantis runs for office with the intent of forcibly keeping millions of women and gay couples from exercising their most basic personal rights, that somehow gets portrayed as just another political view. It’s not. It’s criminal. It’s psychotic. These kinds of right wing politicians are creepy perverts, and they should always be referred to as such.

The post Pervert! appeared first on Palmer Report.

(JTA) — Nearly seven months after they were denied boarding in Frankfurt, a group of more than 100 Hasidic Lufthansa passengers are getting paid for their troubles.

The airline is paying each passenger $20,000 plus giving them $1,000 to reimburse them for expenses incurred during the May incident, according to Dan’s Deals, the discount travel website that first reported the incident at the time. After legal fees and some other expenses, each passenger will net approximately $17,400, the site is reporting.

Lufthansa would not confirm the dollar figures but told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that it is seeking to settle with each of the affected passengers, capping a series of conciliatory responses to the incident.

“Although we are not commenting on the details, we can confirm that Lufthansa endeavors to settle the claims with all of the passengers denied boarding on May 4th, 2022,” the company said in a statement.

That date was when airline agents in Frankfurt barred many Jewish travelers coming from New York City from boarding their connecting flight to Budapest, citing the fact that some of the passengers were not wearing masks, as was required at the time. But that rule was applied inconsistently, passengers said at the time, and a Lufthansa supervisor was caught on video speaking disparagingly about Jewish passengers as a group.

“It’s Jews coming from JFK. Jewish people who were the mess, who made the problems,” the supervisor said on the video, which Dan’s Deals shared shortly after the incident.

Amid intense media coverage, Lufthansa publicly apologized, saying in a statement that the company “regrets the circumstances surrounding the decision to exclude the affected passengers from the flight.”

The company added, “What transpired is not consistent with Lufthansa’s policies or values. We have zero tolerance for racism, anti-Semitism and discrimination of any type.”

In late July, Lufthansa announced the creation of a senior management role to combat discrimination and antisemitism, even as an independent investigation commissioned by the airline concluded that there was no evidence of institutional antisemitism that led to the incident.

And in September, the American Jewish Committee announced a new program to train Lufthansa employees how to identify and respond to antisemitism.

Many of the Jewish passengers bound for Budapest were headed there for an annual pilgrimage to visit the grave of Rabbi Yeshayah Steiner, a miracle-working rabbi who died in 1925.

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

The post Jewish passengers booted off Lufthansa flight in May are getting $20,000 payouts appeared first on The Forward.

Deal-hungry Americans snapped up everything from toys to electronics during the five-day long Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday shopping bonanza lured by steep discounts, sales data showed.

A record 196.7 million people shopped during this period, the National Retail Federation said on Tuesday, and total retail sales jumped about 11%, not adjusted for inflation, Mastercard SpendingPulse data showed.

“Black Friday through Cyber Monday has proven to be a pretty solid weekend, which should give retailers some confidence that demand is there to purchase goods,” said Joseph Feldman, analyst at Telsey Advisory Group.

Cyber Monday sales rose to $11.3 billion from a year earlier, making it the biggest U.S. online shopping day in history, according to Adobe Inc’s (ADBE.O) data and insights arm Adobe Analytics.

Pokemon cards, Hot Wheels, PlayStation 5s, Smart TVs and Apple AirPods were among the best-sellers.

Retailers started promotions and discounts as early as October this year, but some inflation-weary shoppers delayed their holiday shopping until the Black Friday weekend on hopes of finding the best deals.

“Many observers predicted this was going to be a big weekend … it’s turning out to be even bigger than we expected,” NRF President Matthew Shay said.

Major retailers including Target (TGT.N), Macy’s (M.N) and Best Buy (BBY.N) have signaled a return to pre-pandemic shopping patterns during traditional single-day shopping events.

Wall Street is looking for a readout on what the data suggests for the key holiday quarter, though these five days make up for only about 10% of overall sales in the period and may not be a great indicator of the health of the overall economy, some analysts said.

“We are still expecting (the holiday quarter) to be flat year over year … if there is any increase … that will be due to inflation,” said Jessica Ramirez, analyst at Jane Hali and Associates.

Global inflation touched decade highs recently, though U.S. consumer prices last month rose less than expected.

Retailers are also dealing with challenges including strict COVID-19 lockdowns in China, cautious European consumers, a strong dollar that’s hurting international earnings, and a lot of inventory still sitting on shelves, Ramirez said.

“But overall, the consumer is shopping,” she said.

Online toy sales on Cyber Monday jumped nearly eight-fold compared to an average day in October 2022, according to Adobe. Electronics sales rose about five-fold, while sporting goods, appliances and books also saw increases over 400%.

Cyber Monday sales rose 5.8%, said Adobe, which analyzes purchases at 85% of the top 100 internet retailers in the United States. On Black Friday, shoppers spent a record $9.12 billion online, with spending up 2.3% year on year and beating an Adobe estimate of a modest 1% rise.

Overall global online sales for the cyber week hit an all-time high of $281 billion, according to data from Salesforce (CRM.N), while U.S. online sales gained 9% to $68 billion.