Iran’s authorities indicated on Saturday that they could intensify their crackdown on the biggest anti-government demonstrations in years, as the death toll rose to 65 and the Revolutionary Guards blamed the unrest on terrorists, vowing to safeguard the governing system. Major Iranian cities were gripped overnight by new mass rallies denouncing the Islamic Republic, as activists on expressed fear that authorities were intensifying their suppression of the demonstrations under the cover of an internet blackout. The two weeks of protests have posed one of the biggest challenges to the Iranian authorities, although Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has expressed defiance and blamed the United States. Following the movement’s largest protests yet on Thursday, new demonstrations took place late Friday, according to images verified by AFP and other videos published on social media. This was despite an internet shutdown imposed by the authorities, with monitor Netblocks saying early on Saturday that “Iran has no...
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey on Saturday urged demonstrators protesting the fatal shooting of a motorist by a US immigration agent to stay peaceful, saying that any unlawful actions would play into US President Donald Trump’s hands. Frey, a Democrat, cautioned them as civil liberties and migrant-rights groups prepared nationwide rallies to protest the killing of 37-year-old Renee Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer on Wednesday. Minnesota and US officials have offered starkly different accounts of the shooting. Twenty-nine people were arrested overnight in Minneapolis as police responded to protests, including a gathering of demonstrators outside a hotel believed to be lodging a visiting contingent of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, city Police Chief Brian O’Hara said. One police officer was injured in the response, O’Hara told a news conference on Saturday. People march during a demonstration against increased immigration enforcement in Minneapolis, Minnesota, US, January 9,...
Many in the Bitcoin community continue to speculate that cryptographer Hal Finney was Bitcoin's pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. The Bitcoin (BTC) community is celebrating the anniversary of cypherpunk and Bitcoin pioneer Hal Finney’s post on January 10, 2009, telling the world that he was running the Bitcoin node software “Running Bitcoin,” Finney said on X, formerly known as Twitter. Finney was the recipient of the first Bitcoin transaction on the network. He was born on May 4, 1956, and pursued a career in computer science and cryptography, and was one of the first people to respond to Satoshi Nakamoto’s publication of the Bitcoin whitepaper. Read more