News about Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

In 1912, New York toymaker Lionel Co. launched the first electric slot car racing set, featuring heavy tinplate cars, miniature drivers and a two-lane track. About 1,200 sets were produced by 1916. Lionel had pioneered electric locomotive toys, producing its first train, the Electric Express, back in 1900. There is evidence of electric track cars that predate the Lionel version, though these were not true slot cars, i.e. powered miniature cars guided by a groove or slot in the track. These were connected to a raised rail and had only a single track.

Astiyazh Haghighi and her fiance Amir Mohammad Ahmadi, who were in their early 20s, were arrested in early November after a video of them dancing romantically in front of Tehran's Azadi Tower (left). Haghighi did not wear a headscarf in defiance of the Islamic republic's stringent female laws, though women are also forbidden to dance in public in Iran, let alone with a man. According to the Human Rights News Agency, a revolutionary court in Tehran sentenced them to ten years and six months in jail. It's the latest crackdown by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's Islamic republic on any activity that could be construed as opposition amid continuing national demonstrations against the regime (right).

Large numbers of women shaved their headscarves in defiance of the Islamic republic's stringent regulations, and some of them even set them on fire or cut their hair. Protesters have descended on the streets, with one protester kicking one morality cop after leaping to the ground, according to a video. Protesters were seen tearing down the videos of supreme king Ali Khamenei and his predecessor, totalitarian kings who took power of the country after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, according to another clip.

The death of the monarch, according to the authoritarian government, is 'good news for the world's oppressed people,' and that her legacy is 'full of crime, abomination, and filth.' Iran's foreign ministry has not provided information about her death or the ascension to King Charles III's throne, and its government-linked TV stations have broadcast hateful remarks about her legacy.