Widow looking for answers after Quebec man dies in Texas Ironman competition
The widow of a Quebec man who died competing in an Ironman competition is looking for answers.
Videos of revolts and unrest started to flood the internet when Iranian protestors flocked to the streets in response to the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman allegedly detained for wearing her hijab improperly.
Videos of students in Iran protesting militia, along with women on the streets being kicked and pushed and demonstrators raising their fists as they march have been circulated widely around the world, demonstrating the country’s rage following Amini’s death.
“If we don’t join together, we will be killed one by one,” is one of the phrases heard being chanted during the protests.
Attempts to shut down the internet to stop the world from seeing these videos have failed, despite the prohibition of popular social apps like WhatsApp, Signal, Skype and even Instagram—one of the last functional social media platforms.
In Iran, internet outages are common during times of turmoil and protest. According to Amnesty International, the worst crackdown occurred in 2019, when more than 100 demonstrators were killed and the internet was shut down for 12 days.
Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei blamed the U.S. and Israel, the country's adversaries, for inciting the unrest in his first remarks on the nationwide protests on Monday. It's a familiar tactic for Iran's leaders, who have been mistrustful of Western influence since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
American tech firms will be allowed to expand their business in Iran, the U.S. Treasury Department said in September, which authorizes tech firms to offer more social media and collaboration platforms, video conferencing and cloud-based services, the Associated Press reported.
On Monday, U.S. President Biden said in a statement that the U.S. was making it easier for Iranians to access the internet, “including through facilitating greater access to secure, outside platforms and services.”
Through such avenues, access to the internet means that images and videos are surfacing from Iran despite outages and social media bans.
Videos showed some of the Iranian demonstrators have publicly hacked off locks of hair at the protests, a gesture that quickly spread around the world.
Images of women elsewhere cutting their hair to show solidarity with Iranian women have gone viral -- from Turkish singer Melek Mosso on stage last week to women in Lebanon and Syria, to Swedish lawmaker Abir Al-Sahlani in the halls of the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Tuesday.
A museum in Rome is collecting locks of hair to present to the Iranian Embassy.
This highly symbolic gesture also echoes Iranian history and folklore in which for women to chop their hair is a sign of protest. The Shahnameh ("The Book of Kings"), a national epic of Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan written by the Persian poet Ferdowsi between 977 and 1010 A.D., refers to a princess chopping her hair to protest against the death of her husband seen as unfair.
Oscar-winning actors Marion Cotillard and Juliette Binoche, as well as other French screen and music stars, filmed themselves chopping off locks of their hair in a video posted Wednesday.
"For freedom," Binoche said as she hacked a large handful of hair off the top of her head with a pair of scissors, before brandishing it in front of the camera.
With files from The Associated Press and CNN
The widow of a Quebec man who died competing in an Ironman competition is looking for answers.
Facing pushback from physicians and businesspeople over the coming increase to the capital gains inclusion rate, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his deputy Chrystia Freeland are standing by their plan to target Canada's highest earners.
Former NDP leader Tom Mulcair says that what's happening now in a trash-littered federal park in Quebec is a perfect metaphor for how the Trudeau government runs things.
Police are investigating after a transport truck collided with a train in Sarnia.
The world is seeing a near breakdown of international law amid flagrant rule-breaking in Gaza and Ukraine, multiplying armed conflicts, the rise of authoritarianism and huge rights violations in Sudan, Ethiopia and Myanmar, Amnesty International warned Wednesday as it published its annual report.
As some family doctors are retiring and others are moving away from family medicine, there are fewer medical students to take their place.
Individuals being barred from entering Ontario’s legislature while wearing a keffiyeh say the garment is part of their cultural identity— and the only ones making it political are the politicians banning it.
United States authorities who have been searching for a pair of missing kayakers from British Columbia since the weekend have recovered two bodies in the nearby San Juan Islands of Washington state.
A Winnipeg man said a single date gone wrong led to years of criminal harassment, false arrests, stress and depression.
The giant stone statues guarding the Lions Gate Bridge have been dressed in custom Vancouver Canucks jerseys as the NHL playoffs get underway.
A local Oilers fan is hoping to see his team cut through the postseason, so he can cut his hair.
A family from Laval, Que. is looking for answers... and their father's body. He died on vacation in Cuba and authorities sent someone else's body back to Canada.
A former educational assistant is calling attention to the rising violence in Alberta's classrooms.
The federal government says its plan to increase taxes on capital gains is aimed at wealthy Canadians to achieve “tax fairness.”
At 6'8" and 350 pounds, there is nothing typical about UBC offensive lineman Giovanni Manu, who was born in Tonga and went to high school in Pitt Meadows.
Kevin the cat has been reunited with his family after enduring a harrowing three-day ordeal while lost at Toronto Pearson International Airport earlier this week.
Molly Knight, a Grade 4 student in Nova Scotia, noticed her school library did not have many books on female athletes, so she started her own book drive in hopes of changing that.
Almost 7,000 bars of pure gold were stolen from Pearson International Airport exactly one year ago during an elaborate heist, but so far only a tiny fraction of that stolen loot has been found.