🌏 Women In Iran Protest Mahsa Amini's Death, The Queen's Funeral, Russian Police Arrest Anti-War Protesters, And More

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• 🌏 This Week’s Top Stories
• 👩 Women To Know
• 🙌 Good News For Your Week

Russian police officers have arrested more than 1,300 anti-war protesters across the country after President Vladimir Putin announced a “partial mobilization” for the war in Ukraine.

This is Russia’s first military draft since the Second World War and will press an estimated 300,000 people into military service, according to the New York Times.

In a nationwide address on Wednesday Sep. 21, Putin called for a “partial mobilization” of people with military experience to join Russia’s war in Ukraine.

He also accused the US and Europe of “nuclear blackmail”, saying that Russia had “lots of weapons” of its own.

A few hours after the announcement on Wednesday, protests erupted in major cities such as St. Petersburg and Moscow.

“Thousands of Russian men, our fathers, brothers and husbands, will be thrown into the meat grinder of the war. What will they be dying for? What will mothers and children be crying for?” the Vesna opposition movement, which called for protests, said.

Police responded with unnecessary force, beating peaceful protesters with batons and putting them in chokeholds, according to Amnesty International.

At least 1,386 protestors were arrested across the country, according to Amnesty International.

Human rights watchdog OVD-Info reported police transported detainees in overcrowded vans and refused to give them water or to let them use the bathroom.

Non-authorized protests are illegal in Russia.

Since its invasion of Ukraine, the country has also passed laws criminalizing anti-war protests and war reporting, with people facing up to 15 years in prison.

In the UK, Queen Elizabeth II was buried at St. George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle next to her late husband, Prince Philip, on Monday Sep. 19 following a state funeral.

More On The Queen’s Death

👑 Soccer legend David Beckham waited in line for over 13 hours, like everyone else, to pay respects to the late Queen Elizabeth II, and shed a tear when he saw her casket.

👑 Like a tale out of a classic British romcom, two strangers had a “meet queue” and hit it off in the queue to see the Queen lying in state and made plans to watch the Queen’s funeral together.

👑 At the funeral, the Queen’s corgis sat outside Windsor Castle to wait for her coffin to arrive, which made people emotional.

👑 A spider crashed the funeral by crawling across the Queen’s coffin and became a social media star.

👑 And for the first time in history, the Lord Chamberlain, the most senior position in the royal household, broke his wand on TV, symbolically ending the reign of Queen Elizabeth II.

Also Happening Around The World

🇵🇷🇩🇴🇹🇨 Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and the Turks and Caicos Islands have experienced major damage from heavy rainfall from Hurricane Fiona.

🇲🇽 A magnitude 7.6 earthquake struck Mexico on the anniversary of two previous quakes that killed thousands, an almost improbable event, according to scientists.

🇹🇼 Meanwhile, Taiwan was hit by a magnitude 6.8 earthquake and more than 140 aftershocks.

🇮🇹 Torrential rain triggered flash floods that struck the Marche region of central Italy on the evening of Thursday Sep 16, killing at least 10 people and leaving another 50 in hospital.

🇦🇺 More than 200 whales have died in Tasmania, Australia, after an estimated 230 whales became stranded on the beach on the anniversary of another stranding.

🇮🇩 Indonesia will review its minimum wage and other labor rules after the country was rocked by nationwide protests over an increase in petrol prices.

🇨🇳 A massive fire broke out at a skyscraper in Changsha, a southern central city in China’s Hunan province, on Friday Sep. 16.

🇨🇳 Also in China, Li Yifeng, a popular actor, has been detained by police for allegedly soliciting sex workers.

Protests have broken out in Iran after a 22-year-old woman who was detained by the morality police died while in custody.

Mahsa Amini died on Friday Sep. 16. after spending three days in a coma.

She had been arrested on Wednesday outside a metro station in Tehran for not complying with the strict dress code imposed on women in Iran while on a trip to visit relatives in the capital.

Women in Iran must wear a covering on their heads and modest clothes from the age of nine.

Police had allegedly beaten Amini up inside the morality police van while taking her to a detention center, according to eyewitnesses.

Hours after her arrest, her family was informed that she had been taken to Kasra hospital and placed in an intensive-care unit.

The police had transferred her to a hospital because she had suffered a sudden heart attack.

However, her family has questioned that statement because Amini did not suffer from any heart or health problems.

Images shared on social media showed Amini in the hospital and with bandages covering her head.

Doctors then told the family “that while her heart was still beating, her brain is no longer conscious.”

Amini’s death fueled outrage, leading to multiple protests in the capital and Kurdistan, Amini’s home province.

Women are taking off their hijabs to protest her death.

Since the 1979 Iranian revolution, women have been required to wear a hijab, but recently Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has imposed a new set of restrictions to enforce the law.

The new set of restrictions has also brought a new wave of police brutality against women with videos showing the violence committed by the morality police against detained women.

More Women You Should Know About

🇮🇳 Two teenage sisters have been found raped, murdered and hanging from a tree in India.

🇱🇧 A woman held up a bank in Lebanon’s capital Beirut with a toy gun and demanded to withdraw her own money from her frozen savings account to pay for her sister’s medical bills, one of the many incidents happening in the country as it experiences a major economic crisis.

Dozens of people in Seoul, South Korea, took part in a “Space Out” Competition on Sunday Sep. 18, where they sat for 90 minutes without doing anything.

The competition is a performance arts event that encourages people who live in the city to do nothing and take a break from the stress of everyday life.

Participants are required to sit without talking, sleeping, eating or using any electronic devices for 90 minutes.

They instead hold up a color card to signal their needs, such as red for a massage when sleepy, blue for water, yellow for fanning and black for other requirements, according to the Korea Herald.

The “most stable” competitors are selected based on heart rate data, which is measured every 15 minutes, along with a vote by spectators, and rewarded.

Those who can maintain a stable heart rate or show a gradual downward curve will be rewarded with extra points.

The competition, held by the Seoul government with the event organizers, aims to show people that there is value in doing nothing.

More Good News For Your Week

🇷🇸 Despite almost being banned and several far-right protests, thousands of people attended the Belgrade Pride in Serbia on Saturday Sep. 17.

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