World
Indonesia blocks AI chatbot Grok. Investigation into US Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell. Trump’s ‘invasion’ of Minnesota. By Jonathan Pearlman.
Thousands killed in Iran’s anti-government protests
Great power rivalry
Iran: Authorities in Iran have killed thousands of people and arrested more than 18,000 during a crackdown on anti-government protests, prompting United States President Donald Trump to threaten military intervention.
The protests began in late December amid concerns about the dire economy, as the government moved to end currency subsidies that had helped to contain prices in the face of an inflation rate of about 40 per cent.
But the demonstrations soon spread across the country and widened into broader protests against the government – the largest since at least 2022, when the death in police custody of a 22-year-old woman, Mahsa Amini, sparked nationwide protests.
Iran blocked the internet and mobile phones last week but lifted restrictions on phone calls on Tuesday. The blackout has made it difficult to access credible information, but the Human Rights Activists News Agency, which is based in the US and is usually reliable, said on Wednesday 2435 protesters and 153 security personnel had been killed and more than 18,470 people had been arrested. Other reports have suggested the death toll may be as high as 10,000. Footage this week showed large chanting crowds and the military firing at fleeing protesters.
Iran’s foreign affairs minister, Abbas Araghchi, on Monday claimed the protests were “under control”, blaming them on the US and Israel.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, said the Islamic republic will “not back down” and accused protesters of trying to “please the US president”.
Trump threatened to intervene this week, saying on social media that “help is on its way”. Asked about Iran’s reported plans to hang protesters, he told CBS News: “If they do such a thing, we will take very strong action.”
The US withdrew some personnel from its air base in Qatar on Wednesday and reportedly took other precautionary steps at bases in the region to prepare for a potential conflict with Iran. Some British personnel were also evacuated. A US official told The Washington Post that Tehran had warned Qatar it will strike Qatar if the US attacks Iran.
Awyer Shekhi, a Kurdish rights activist, told BBC News on Wednesday the crackdown was the most severe that had ever been imposed by Iranian authorities. “We have never witnessed this scale of mass killings in the big cities like Tehran,” she said.
The neighbourhood
Indonesia: The Indonesian government has blocked Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot over concerns about its use to create sexually explicit and non-consensual images.
Meutya Hafid, the communication and digital affairs minister, said in a statement last weekend that Grok, an AI tool on Musk’s X platform, was being used to produce sexual deepfakes that were “a serious violation of human rights, dignity and the safety of citizens in the digital space”.
Indonesia was the world’s first country to block the chatbot, but Malaysia has since imposed a ban and the United Kingdom says it may follow.
Malaysia’s Communications and Multimedia Commission said it asked X for safeguards and was dissatisfied with the platform’s response, which referred to the ability of users to report concerns. The commission said Grok was being used to “generate obscene, sexually explicit, indecent, grossly offensive, and non-consensual manipulated images, including content involving women and minors”.
The chatbot has an image-generation feature with a “spicy mode” that can generate adult content. Complaints from countries such as the UK, India and France prompted X to limit the image-making feature to paying users, but critics say the move is inadequate.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer told fellow Labour Party MPs on Monday: “If X cannot control Grok, we will.”
Democracy in retreat
United States: The Trump administration has opened an investigation into Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell over the renovations of the central bank’s headquarters – a move that Powell said was payback for his refusal to buckle to Donald Trump’s demand for interest rate cuts.
Trump appointed Powell, a Republican and former investment banker, as chair in 2017, saying he would provide “strong, sound and steady leadership”.
But Trump quickly turned on Powell, castigating him for lifting interest rates to combat inflation and then for not cutting them more aggressively.
“He’s a knucklehead,” Trump said at a White House gathering last July. “Stupid guy. He really is.”
Last weekend, it emerged that the US Justice Department had launched a criminal investigation into Powell’s statements to congress last June about a US$2.5 billion revamp of the bank’s headquarters. Trump has accused Powell of misleading congress about the extent of the renovations, the cost of which was initially expected to be US$1.9 billion.
The investigation was seen as an effort to curb the bank’s independence and has been widely criticised, including by former chairs Janet Yellen, Ben Bernanke and Alan Greenspan – as well as some Republicans.
Thom Tillis, a Republican senator, said in a statement: “If there were any remaining doubt whether advisers within the Trump Administration are actively pushing to end the independence of the Federal Reserve, there should now be none.”
In an extraordinary statement, Powell, whose term ends in May, said the investigation was “not about my testimony last June or about the renovation”.
“The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the president.”
Trump has denied knowledge of the investigation but continued to call for Powell’s departure. He told CBS News on Tuesday: “He’s been a lousy Fed chairman.”
Spotlight: Trump’s ‘invasion’ of Minnesota
United States: On the streets of Minneapolis, residents and protesters faced volleys of tear gas and pepper balls this week as they demanded that a growing deployment of masked and heavily armed immigration officers “go home”.
Since late December, almost 3000 federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, agents have descended on the city to conduct the Trump administration’s biggest operation yet against suspected unlawful migrants. The operation has involved violent raids across the city and resulted in an agent shooting a 37-year-old mother in her car on a residential street.
Larry Kraft, a Democratic Minnesota state representative, said in a statement this week: “Masked men are coming in, arresting people without cause, racially profiling our neighbours, and wreaking havoc ... ICE needs to leave our state. None of this is about public safety.”
The deployment has targeted the city’s 80,000-member Somali community, which Trump described in December as “garbage” after some Somalis were implicated in a scheme to defraud social services.
Mina Omar, a 27-year-old nurse who was born in Minneapolis, told The New York Times this week that the community was being harassed by ICE agents and by some locals who have demanded to see the papers of fellow residents. “Just going to the grocery store, people look at you differently,” she said.
Protests against ICE have spread nationwide since the death of Renee Good, who was killed by a federal agent while apparently moving her car away from the agent and calmly saying, “I’m not mad at you.”
Good was a volunteer monitoring ICE’s operations. Federal officials have accused her of trying to run over the agent – a claim disputed by city authorities and at odds with footage of the shooting. Trump described her as a violent radical and a “professional agitator”. Vice President J. D. Vance said her interference with a law enforcement operation was “classic terrorism” and her death was a “tragedy of her own making”.
Responding to the claims, Jacob Frey, the mayor of Minneapolis, said: “Having seen the video myself, I want to tell everybody directly that is bullshit.”
On Monday, Minnesota launched legal action to try to stop the ICE deployment, saying the operation was politically motivated and unconstitutional. Keith Ellison, the state’s attorney-general, told reporters ICE had used excessive force and conducted warrantless, racist arrests targeting “our courts, our churches, houses of worship and schools”.
“This is, in essence, a federal invasion … and it must stop.”
This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on January 16, 2026 as "Thousands killed in Iran’s anti-government protests".
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