Loose lips get whips

In this country, we crack jokes about guys getting whipped when they're in a relationship with a woman, but in other parts of the world, it's no laughing matter:

A Saudi appeals court upheld a jail and flogging verdict against a biochemist and his female student whose research contact was ruled to be a front for a telephone affair that led her to divorce her husband.

The biochemist, Khalid Zahrani, said Wednesday that he found out this week from the court offices that three judges had approved the verdict.

He was sentenced last year to eight months in prison and 600 lashes and his student to four months in prison and 350 lashes for establishing a telephone relationship that the court said led her to divorce her husband.

The man said the only recourse left to him was the Supreme Judicial Council, a court of cassation that only views cases if requested by the king. He also hopes for intervention from the government's Human Rights Commission.

Um, is it just me, or is the Saudi Human Rights Commission kind of not doing a bang-up job if you can be flogged there for talking on the phone with a woman? Seems like the kind of thing they'd be trying to prevent.