The Iranian demonstrator Neda Soltan shot dead in Teheran last Saturday has become a quasi-martyr for the cause of the opposition. Today’s Guardian reports that her family has been evicted from their home as police turn away mourners. The images of Neda’s death circulated around the world. The treatment of Neda’s family is shocking. The police did not hand the body back to her family, her funeral was cancelled, she was buried without letting her family know and the government banned mourning ceremonies at mosques, neighbours said. Friends who came to console the family were not allowed access to their apartment and now, in a final indignity, they’ve been evicted. Also in the Guardian, there is a cartoon which shows Ayatollah Khameni with the blood of Neda on his face. For those who’ve seen the video of her dying, these marks are unmistakable. The cartoon is a powerful reflection of the mark Neda’s death has left on the Teheran government’s reputation.

The American news website The Huffington Post carries an article by David Bromwich entitled, “Iran was an easier enemy before we saw their faces.” The article more or less says that the warmongers in the United States and Israel have been dealt a body blow. John McCain, the article says, is best known amongst Iranians as the man who sang ‘Bomb, bomb Iran” during the elections last year. For him and others to now pose as defenders of the Iranian protestors simply isn’t credible. “We’ve seen these ordinary men and women in the streets, people much like ourselves, Bromwich writes. “We don’t want to see them die at the hands of their government or at the hands of ours for that matter.” The plans for good wars and wars of liberation need to reduce the enemy to a blank face before the bombing feels right, he adds.

To an editorial in The Times of India entitled “A baffling move”, which says Sarkozy’s move to ban the burka is ill-advised. It shows a “public lack of diplomacy that would make the flamboyantly tactless Silvio Berlusconi envious”. The crucial difference between secularism as it is understood in France and as it is practised in India becomes apparent here, the paper says. The danger of the French form of secularism is that it forms rigid barrier between religion and public life which can be perverted into extremism.

The Russian press is covering the latest media stunt by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. While on a surprise visit to a supermarket, he ordered the astonished management to lower its prices, the Kommersant newspaper reports. Walking through the aisles, he stopped on front of the sausages section and asked the manager, “Why do they cost 240 roubles ($7.50)? Do you think that’s acceptable?” The shopkeeper defended himself saying they were quality sausages. “Look at these ones, they only cost 49 roubles,” he protested. Putin then calculated a 52% profit market for the more expensive sausages and insisted it was unacceptable which the shopkeeper in the end accepted, promising to lower his prices starting the next day.

This comes just two weeks after Putin visited a town near Saint Petersbourg where an oligarch had shut down his cement factory because of the crisis. He launched into a tirade against factory owner on front of cameras before throwing a pen in his direction in order to sign a contract and keep the factory open!

“Abercrombie and Fitch hide woman in stockroom,” reads the title of this article in the British paper, The Independent. The clothing retailer has been accused of “hiding” a sales assistant in a stockroom at a London outlet because her prosthetic arm didn’t fit with its “look policy”, a tribunal heard yesterday. The “look policy” stipulates that all employees “represent Abercrombie & Fitch with natural, classic American style consistent with the company’s brand” and “look great while exhibiting individuality”. Workers must wear a “clean, natural, classic hairstyle” and have nails which extend “no more than a quarter inch beyond the tip of the finger”. She wore a cardigan to cover the link between her prosthesis and her upper arm. The cardigan was used against her in the look policy. She is seeking £25,000 in damages.