In this week's edition of Zooming In, Gelf's quasi-weekly round-up of undercovered local stories from around the world: Japan's Jayson Blair; robotic camel jockeys; the mobile phone throwing world championships; and China's newest pop idols. One of our favorite stories this week concerns advice given out by a certain Ayatolla.

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani is perhaps the preeminent voice of Shi'ite Islam today, and his website, based in Qom, Iran, receives over 15,000 visitors a day (Asia Times). Many Muslims write in to Sistani—who used his influence in Iraq to help set up the current government—to ask questions about what their faith permits. Sistani weighs in on anal sex (permissible but undesirable), chess (absolutely forbidden), masturbation ("You are not allowed to do it with hand, but your wife is"), and copyrights ("If someone else has cracked the software, you can use it but you are not allowed to copy or burn it").