The supreme leader finally broke his silence on the unrest to blame the “riots” and “chaos” on a plan by the United States, the “Zionist regime and their followers.”

The Hijabs Come off

As the new academic year began this week, students across Iran turned their classrooms into stages for anti-regime demonstrations.

Videos posted to social media show female students removing their hijabs and chanting “Death to the dictator!” as they stomped on pictures of “their rulers,” as one post put it.

In one viral video, girls who had shed their headscarves at a school in Karaj, just outside Tehran, surrounded their principal and screamed at him while throwing objects.

The principal, whom the post describes as “pro-regime,” fled the scene as they yelled that he is “without honor.”

“Typically, when protests occur in Iran, they usually are restricted to streets or university campuses or they are led by workers or teachers,” Vahid Yücesoy, a PhD candidate in political science at the University of Montreal who shared the video, told Newsweek. “The fact that they have now arrived at high schools is a very unprecedented development.”

It’s been roughly three weeks since the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, a Kurdish woman who was arrested by morality police for violating Iran’s dress code and ended up comatose in a hospital.

Multiple reports claimed that officers beat her head with batons, though authorities countered that her death was rather due to a “sudden heart failure.”

The death toll from clashes between law enforcement and protesters may be as low as 41, according to Iranian state media last week, or as high as 133, according to the Norway-based group Iran Human Rights. Amnesty International has put the number at 52, and it said on Friday that hundreds of people had been injured and thousands arrested.

Campus Becomes a Bloody Warzone

Security forces trapped hundreds of students from Tehran’s elite Sharif University in a campus parking lot, assailed them with tear gas, and shot at them with less lethal rounds Sunday, according to reports and videos posted to social media.

“They had guns, they had paintball guns, they had batons,” Farid, whose name was changed for his safety, told CNN. “They were using gases… [that are] banned internationally… it was a war zone… there was blood everywhere.”

A video reviewed by the outlet shows security forces detaining students and carrying them on motorbikes.

The event took place on the first day of school after many students chose to protest the regime instead of attending classes. Farid said a group of protesters was confronted on campus by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, which was called in by campus security.

“They told them that ‘if you go near the subway station, we will start shooting, go back to the university,’” He added. “And then after half of the students got back into the university, they let the others into the parking lot. And after that, they started shooting them with paintballs and taking them into custody in a very, very savage way.”

The university’s Students Islamic Association urged in a Monday statement that all “professors and students at Sharif University not to attend classes until all arrested students are released.”

Iranian state news agency IRNA said Monday that 30 of the 37 students arrested during the protests had been released, citing a source at the university.

On Monday, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei finally broke his silence regarding the protest movement, saying he was dismayed at Amini’s death during a graduation ceremony for military cadets at the Imam Hassan Training Center.

“Yes, this was a bitter incident. My heart was also pained,” he said.

But he also condemned the protest movement as “not natural” and “planned” by the United States, the “Zionist regime and their followers,” using his term for the state of Israel.

See what others are saying: (CNN) (Newsweek) (NPR)

The sports game turned bloodbath was among the deadliest in the sport’s history.

Trampled by the Crowd

At least 125 people died after police fired tear gas, sparking a chaotic stampede toward the exits at a soccer match in Indonesia, according to local officials.

The game between Arema, the home team in East Java’s Malang city, and Persebaya Surabaya took place Saturday night at the Kanjuruhan Stadium.

The event organizer had prohibited Persebaya fans from attending the game in an effort to prevent rivalrous brawling, but that only ensured the stadium would be exclusively packed with riled-up Arema fans.

When Arema lost 3-2, hundreds of spectators poured onto the field and some reportedly threw bottles and other objects at the players and managers. Several cop cars were also toppled outside the stadium and set ablaze.

Eyewitness accounts claim that riot police beat people with shields and batons, then fired tear gas canisters directly into the crowd and even into the stands.

Hordes of people, many of them dizzy and blinded by the chemical, clambered desperately for the exits.

The ensuing stampede quickly left 34 people dead, both from being trampled and suffocated, including two police officers and possibly some children, according to some reports. Many more were badly hurt and rushed to hospitals, but as dozens of them succumbed to their injuries, the death toll climbed to at least 125.

An official estimate initially put the number at 174, but it was later revised down due to some deaths being counted twice.

As many as 300 other individuals may have sustained injuries during the incident.

Who is to Blame?

Some human rights groups pointed fingers at the police for provoking the mayhem by improperly deploying tear gas.

“The excessive use of force through the use of tear gas and inappropriate crowd control was the cause of the large number of fatalities,” Indonesia’s Legal Aid Foundation said in a statement.

The Foundation also blamed the local soccer committee, which sold 42,000 tickets in a stadium only meant to seat 38,000 people, for filling the venue over capacity.

Typically, tear gas is meant to put distance between the rioters and police, dispersing the crowd in an intended direction, not to be used indiscriminately in a secure location like a sports stadium.

Moreover, the global soccer governing body FIFA prohibits the use of tear gas.

“I regret that this tragedy occurred,” President Joko Widodo said in a televised address. “And I hope this is the last football tragedy in the country.”

He said he had asked National Police Chief Listyo Sigit to investigate the incident and ordered an evaluation of security at soccer matches.

East Java’s police chief Nico Afinta defended the use of tear gas in a news conference on Sunday.

“We have already done a preventive action before finally firing the tear gas as (fans) began to attack the police, acting anarchically and burning vehicles,” he said.

Indonesia’s soccer association, known as PSSI, suspended the premier soccer league Liga 1 indefinitely in light of the tragedy and banned Arema from hosting soccer matches for the remainder of the season.

Dozens of Indonesians have died in soccer-related violence since the 1990s, but Saturday’s tragedy is among the deadliest in soccer history.

See what others are saying: (Associated Press) (The New York Times)

When it hits the sunshine state, Ian is expected to be a category 3 hurricane.

Ian Lands in Cuba

Hurricane Ian made landfall in Cuba Tuesday morning as a major category 3 storm, battering the western parts of the country with sustained winds of 125 miles per hour.

The National Hurricane Center (NHC) warned that life-threatening storm surges, hurricane-force winds, flash floods, and mudslides are expected. Officials said that around 50,000 people have been evacuated as of Tuesday afternoon. 

According to reports, flooding has damaged houses and tobacco crops in the region, and widespread power outages have also been reported.

As dangerous conditions continue in Cuba, Ian is expected to move into the Gulf of Mexico and pass west of the Florida Keys later on Tuesday, becoming a category 4 before the end of the day.

Officials predict it will drop back to a category 3 before making landfall as a major hurricane in Florida, which it is expected to do Wednesday evening.

In a statement Tuesday afternoon, FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell said that Ian is currently forecast to land “somewhere between Fort Meyers and Tampa.” She added that the storm is expected to slow down as it hits Flordia, extending the potential devastation.

Uncertain Path

Forecasts of Ian’s path, however, remain uncertain, leaving residents all over Florida scrambling to prepare for the storm.

Schools have closed down, airports have suspended operations, and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has activated the National Guard and taken steps to ensure power outages can be remedied, warning that many should anticipate losing power.

There are also numerous storm and surge watches and warnings in place across Florida and in parts of Georgia and South Carolina.  

Evacuation warnings have been implemented throughout many parts of Florida, and officials have said that around 2.5 million people were under some kind of evacuation order by Tuesday afternoon.

Mandatory evacuations have been put in place in several counties, largely focused on coastal and low-lying areas. Some of those evacuation orders have extended to parts of Tampa — Florida’s third-largest city.

Tampa has not been hit by a major hurricane in over a century — a fact that just further emphasizes the unusual path this storm is taking. 

Florida’s Division of Emergency Management has a tool to track evacuation zones, as well as more resources at floridadisaster.org. For those looking for shelter, the Red Cross has a system to find one nearby. 

Continued Threats

The current evacuations are being driven by a number of very serious threats posed by Hurricane Ian. According to the NHC, hurricane-force winds, tropical storm conditions, heavy rainfall, and flooding are expected throughout much of the region.

“Considerable” flooding is also expected in central Florida and predicted to extend into southern Georgia and coastal South Carolina.

One of the biggest threats this hurricane poses is storm surge flooding at the coast — which has been a driving factor in the evacuations.

“Life-threatening storm surge looks increasingly likely along much of the Florida west coast where a storm surge warning is in effect, with the highest risk from Fort Myers to the Tampa Bay region,” the NHC warned Tuesday.

As many experts have pointed out, these dangerous threats of storm surges and catastrophic flooding have been drastically exacerbated by climate change. Specifically, sea level rise driven by climate change makes surges and flooding more likely and more extreme.

According to Axios, a profound example can be found in St. Petersburg, Florida — which is expected to be impacted by Ian — and where sea levels have risen by nearly nine inches since 1947.

That, however, is not only the real-time impact of climate change that is evident from this storm. In addition to climate change being “linked to an increase in rainfall from tropical storms and hurricanes,” Axios also notes that Ian “has been rapidly intensifying over extremely warm sea surface temperatures in the Caribbean that are running above average for this time of year.”

“Climate change favors more instances of rapidly intensifying storms such as Hurricane Ian, due to the combination of warming seas and a warmer atmosphere that can carry additional amounts of water vapor,” the outlet added.

See what others are saying: (Axios) (The New York Times) (CNN)