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Iran Protesters Call For Three-Day Strike from Monday

People walk in a street on a rainy day in Tehran, Iran, 04 December 2022. (EPA)
People walk in a street on a rainy day in Tehran, Iran, 04 December 2022. (EPA)
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Iran Protesters Call For Three-Day Strike from Monday

People walk in a street on a rainy day in Tehran, Iran, 04 December 2022. (EPA)
People walk in a street on a rainy day in Tehran, Iran, 04 December 2022. (EPA)

Protesters in Iran called on Sunday a three-day strike this week as they seek to maintain pressure on authorities over the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, with protests planned on the day President Ebrahim Raisi is due to address students in Tehran. 

Raisi is expected to visit Tehran University on Wednesday, celebrated in Iran as Student Day. 

To coincide with Student Day, protesters are calling for strikes by merchants and a rally towards Tehran's Azadi (Freedom) Square, according to individual posts shared on Twitter by accounts unverified by Reuters. 

They have also called for three days of boycotting any economic activity starting on Monday. 

Similar calls for strike action and mass mobilization have in past weeks resulted in an escalation in the unrest which has swept the country - some of the biggest anti-government protests since Iran's 1979 revolution 

The activist HRANA news agency said 470 protesters had been killed as of Saturday, including 64 minors. It said 18,210 demonstrators were arrested and 61 members of the security forces were killed. 

Iran's Interior Ministry state security council said on Saturday the death toll was 200, according to the judiciary's news agency Mizan. 

The nationwide protests began after Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman, died in the custody of Iran's morality police on Sept. 16, after she was detained for violating the hijab restrictions governing how women dress. 

Residents posting on social media and newspapers such Shargh daily say there have been fewer sightings of the morality police on the streets in recent weeks as authorities apparently try to avoid provoking more protests. 

On Saturday, Iran's Public Prosecutor Mohammad Jafar Montazeri was cited by the semi-official Iranian Labor News Agency as saying that the morality police had been disbanded. 

"The same authority which has established this police has shut it down," Montazeri was quoted as saying. 

Iran's Interior Ministry, which is the authority in charge of the morality police, has yet to comment on the status of the force, which is tasked with monitoring Iranians' clothing and public behavior. 

Montazeri said the morality police was not under the judiciary's authority, which "continues to monitor behavioral actions at the community level." 

Top Iranian officials have repeatedly said Tehran would not change its mandatory hijab policy, nor the way it enforces this policy. 

Executions 

State media said four men convicted of cooperating with Israel's spy agency Mossad were executed on Sunday. 

They had been arrested in June - before the current unrest sweeping the country - following cooperation between the Ministry of Intelligence and the Revolutionary Guards, Tasnim news agency reported. 

Tehran has long accused arch-enemy Israel of carrying out covert operations on its soil. Tehran has recently accused Israeli and Western intelligence services of plotting a civil war in Iran. 

Iranian state media reported on Wednesday that the country's Supreme Court had upheld the death sentence handed out to the four men "for the crime of cooperating with the intelligence services of the Zionist regime and for kidnapping". 

Three other people were handed prison sentences of between five and 10 years after being convicted of crimes that included acting against national security, aiding in kidnapping, and possessing illegal weapons, the Mehr news agency said.  

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World

Factory Explosion Kills 8 in Northern China

Employees work on an electric vehicle (EV) production line at the Volkswagen Anhui factory in Hefei, Anhui province, China, February 4, 2026. REUTERS/Florence Lo
Employees work on an electric vehicle (EV) production line at the Volkswagen Anhui factory in Hefei, Anhui province, China, February 4, 2026. REUTERS/Florence Lo
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Factory Explosion Kills 8 in Northern China

Employees work on an electric vehicle (EV) production line at the Volkswagen Anhui factory in Hefei, Anhui province, China, February 4, 2026. REUTERS/Florence Lo
Employees work on an electric vehicle (EV) production line at the Volkswagen Anhui factory in Hefei, Anhui province, China, February 4, 2026. REUTERS/Florence Lo

An explosion at a biotech factory in northern China has killed eight people, Chinese state media reported Sunday, increasing the total number of fatalities by one.

State news agency Xinhua had previously reported that seven people died and one person was missing after the Saturday morning explosion at the Jiapeng biotech company in Shanxi province, citing local authorities.

Later, Xinhua said eight were dead, adding that the firm's legal representative had been taken into custody.

The company is located in Shanyin County, about 400 kilometers west of Beijing, AFP reported.

Xinhua said clean-up operations were ongoing, noting that reporters observed dark yellow smoke emanating from the site of the explosion.

Authorities have established a team to investigate the cause of the blast, the report added.

Industrial accidents are common in China due to lax safety standards.
In late January, an explosion at a steel factory in the neighboring province of Inner Mongolia left at least nine people dead.

World

Iran Warns Will Not Give Up Enrichment Despite US War Threat

Traffic moves through a street in Tehran on February 7, 2026. (Photo by ATTA KENARE / AFP)
Traffic moves through a street in Tehran on February 7, 2026. (Photo by ATTA KENARE / AFP)
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Iran Warns Will Not Give Up Enrichment Despite US War Threat

Traffic moves through a street in Tehran on February 7, 2026. (Photo by ATTA KENARE / AFP)
Traffic moves through a street in Tehran on February 7, 2026. (Photo by ATTA KENARE / AFP)

Iran will never surrender the right to enrich uranium, even if war "is imposed on us,” its foreign minister said Sunday, defying pressure from Washington.

"Iran has paid a very heavy price for its peaceful nuclear program and for uranium enrichment," Abbas Araghchi told a forum in Tehran.

"Why do we insist so much on enrichment and refuse to give it up even if a war is imposed on us? Because no one has the right to dictate our behavior," he said, two days after he met US envoy Steve Witkoff in Oman.

The foreign minister also declared that his country was not intimidated by the US naval deployment in the Gulf.

"Their military deployment in the region does not scare us," Araghchi said.

World

Washington Post Publisher Will Lewis Stepping Down Days after Big Layoffs

A person walks outside The Washington Post headquarters in Washington, DC, USA, 04 February 2026. EPA/JIM LO SCALZO
A person walks outside The Washington Post headquarters in Washington, DC, USA, 04 February 2026. EPA/JIM LO SCALZO
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Washington Post Publisher Will Lewis Stepping Down Days after Big Layoffs

A person walks outside The Washington Post headquarters in Washington, DC, USA, 04 February 2026. EPA/JIM LO SCALZO
A person walks outside The Washington Post headquarters in Washington, DC, USA, 04 February 2026. EPA/JIM LO SCALZO

Washington Post publisher Will Lewis said Saturday that he’s stepping down, ending a troubled tenure three days after the newspaper said that it was laying off one-third of its staff.

Lewis announced his departure in a two-paragraph email to the newspaper's staff, saying that after two years of transformation, “now is the right time for me to step aside.” The Post's chief financial officer, Jeff D'Onofrio, was appointed temporary publisher, The Associated Press reported.

Neither Lewis nor the newspaper's billionaire owner Jeff Bezos participated in the meeting with staff members announcing the layoffs on Wednesday. While anticipated, the cutbacks were deeper than expected, resulting in the shutdown of the Post's renowned sports section, the elimination of its photography staff and sharp reductions in personnel responsible for coverage of metropolitan Washington and overseas.

They came on top of widespread talent defections in recent years at the newspaper, which lost tens of thousands of subscribers following Bezos' order late in the 2024 presidential campaign pulling back from a planned endorsement of Kamala Harris, and a subsequent reorienting of its opinion section in a more conservative direction.

Martin Baron, the Post’s first editor under Bezos, condemned his former boss this week for attempting to curry favor with President Donald Trump and called what has happened at the newspaper “a case study in near-instant, self-inflicted brand destruction.”

The British-born Lewis was a former top executive at The Wall Street Journal before taking over at The Post in January 2024. His tenure has been rocky from the start, marked by layoffs and a failed reorganization plan that led to the departure of former top editor Sally Buzbee.

His initial choice to take over for Buzbee, Robert Winnett, withdrew from the job after ethical questions were raised about both he and Lewis' actions while working in England. They include paying for information that produced major stories, actions that would be considered unethical in American journalism. The current executive editor, Matt Murray, took over shortly thereafter.

Lewis didn't endear himself to Washington Post journalists with blunt talk about their work, at one point saying in a staff meeting that they needed to make changes because not enough people were reading their work.

This week's layoffs have led to some calls for Bezos to either increase his investment in The Post or sell it to someone who will take a more active role. Lewis, in his note, praised Bezos: “The institution could not have had a better owner,” he said.

“During my tenure, difficult decisions have been taken in order to ensure the sustainable future of The Post so it can for many years ahead publish high-quality nonpartisan news to millions of customers each day,” Lewis said.

The Washington Post Guild, the union representing staff members, called Lewis' exit long overdue.

“His legacy will be the attempted destruction of a great American journalism institution,” the Guild said in a statement. “But it’s not too late to save The Post. Jeff Bezos must immediately rescind these layoffs or sell the paper to someone willing to invest in its future.”

Bezos did not mention Lewis in a statement saying D'Onofrio and his team are positioned to lead The Post into “an exciting and thriving next chapter.”

“The Post has an essential journalistic mission and an extraordinary opportunity,” Bezos said. “Each and every day our readers give us a roadmap to success. The data tells us what is valuable and where to focus.”

D'Onofrio, who joined the paper last June after jobs at the digital ad management company Raptive, Google, Zagat and Major League Baseball, said in a note to staff that "we are ending a hard week of change with more change.

“This is a challenging time across all media organizations, and The Post is unfortunately no exception,” he wrote. “I've had the privilege of helping chart the course of disrupters and cultural stalwarts alike. All faced economic headwinds in changing industry landscapes, and we rose to meet those moments. I have no doubt we will do just that, together.”