Protests sparked up in New York City and across the country Saturday in response to the military strikes in Iran.
One that started in Times Square saw a massive turnout.
"It's one appalling thing after another"
At its peak Saturday afternoon, the protest ballooned to nearly 1,000 people. Hundreds of demonstrators from all walks of life mobilized just hours after the United States and Israel launched a military operation against Iran.
Protesters say it was not only unwarranted, but also the last thing the U.S. should be involved in.
"There is a broad base of society that is against all these things, whether it's the attacks on Minneapolis from ICE or the attacks today in Iran," protest organizer Mike Chrisemer said.
"It's one appalling thing after another, but now a war without consulting Congress?" protester Betsy Robinson said.
"People in Iran have the right to determine for themselves their own future, and it's not up to us to meddle in the affairs of another country's," protest organizer Carla Reyes said.
New Yorkers flood Times Square to protest military strikes in Iran
Live: Trump says US-Israeli war on Iran may last ‘four weeks’ as oil prices surge
Events are still unfolding rapidly across the Middle East, so here's a quick recap:
The death toll from the US-Israeli strike on a girls’ school in Minab has climbed to 165, according to the city’s prosecutor.
At least 20 people have been killed in a US-Israeli attack on the Iranian capital, according to Iranian state-linked media, marking another deadly attack in the widening assault on the country.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has dismissed US President Donald Trump’s warning against retaliation, vowing that Tehran will place “no limit” on its right to defend itself after what he described as massive US-Israeli bombardment.
The US military says it has hit more than 1,000 targets across Iran since launching its war on Saturday.
The US military says it has destroyed the headquarters of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in a large-scale strike.
After a Sports Hall in Iran Was Bombed, Witnesses Describe Chaos and “Continuous Screaming”
Dozens of teenage girls were attending their regular training sessions of volleyball, basketball, and gymnastics in the main sports hall in Lamerd, a city near the Persian coast, when a missile slammed into the building at 5 p.m. on Saturday. Additional strikes hit two nearby residential areas and a hall adjacent to a school, as the U.S. and Israel pounded targets across Iran on the first day of what President Donald Trump declared as a regime change war. According to local officials cited in Iranian state media, the strikes on Lamerd killed at least 18 civilians and wounded scores more.
“Within seconds of the missile strike, the windows shattered into thousands of fragments. Sports equipment, balls, tables, barriers flew through the air. Black smoke filled the space. The smell of gunpowder made breathing almost impossible. The screaming began immediately, layered with the sound of debris collapsing and concrete falling from the ceiling,” Mohammed Saed Khorshedy, a 29-year-old worker at the gym who witnessed the attack, told Drop Site News.
The facility sits on the outskirts of Lamerd, a quiet city in Fars province, near the surrounding Zagros mountain range, giving the natural landscape an uneven, rugged character. The rectangular building is at a crossroads connecting the city center to Bandar Assaluyeh, an industrial port and energy hub on the Persian Gulf.
The sports hall was poorly maintained, with deteriorating walls surrounded by a low perimeter fence. A high arched metal roof sat atop a reinforced concrete frame and a rubber floor for volleyball and other sports. The missile struck the middle of the roof, destroying a large part of the building. The main court, small spectator stands, changing rooms, and coach’s office were all reduced to rubble.
Drones Pound Russia’s Novorossiysk, Oil Terminal Set Ablaze
Explosions were reported in the Russian port city of Novorossiysk overnight between Sunday and Monday.
Novorossiysk hosts Russia’s second-largest oil export facilities and the bulk of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet after Ukrainian drones rendered naval bases in occupied Crimea unsafe for the fleet.
Between Sunday and Monday, Novorossiysk Mayor Andrey Kravchenko reported ongoing Ukrainian drone strikes and damage to buildings, while videos from locals show fire erupting on the horizon and explosions ringing across the city.
Russia’s independent outlet Astra, citing local reports, reported a fire at an oil terminal in Novorossiysk, with flames illuminating an orange glow against the dark skyline.
Unlocking the secrets of an ancient plague
In the middle of the 7th century, a plague swept through the walled city of Jerash, in what is now modern-day Jordan.
Ceramicists abandoned their workshops under the Hippodrome, leaving unfired pottery in their haste. Young and old alike succumbed to a bacteria called Yersinia Pestis, the same microbe responsible for the Black Death seven centuries later.
The city, unable to manage the dead and dying, converted those workshops into a mass grave.
"It was filled within days — hundreds of bodies," says Rays Jiang, a University of South Florida geneticist and lead author of a new study in the Journal of Archeological Science, highlighting the plague victims of Jerash. "There's no ceremony, there's no grave goods. It's a bare minimum to get the bodies disposed of and away from the city."
To understand the lives of the people who died at Jerash, Jiang gathered a team of eight experts from various specialties: archeology, molecular genetics, anthropology and chemistry. Their work helps illustrate the devastation of what is believed to be the first historically recorded pandemic, which began with the Plague of Justinian and killed tens of millions of people across the Mediterranean Basin, West Asia and Northern Europe from roughly 541 to 750.
US moving pregnant immigrant girls to Texas to avoid providing abortions, critics say
All unaccompanied immigrant children who are pregnant, many by rape, are being moved to a single facility in Texas in order to avoid providing abortion services in a significant human rights violation, critics say.
As detainees are frequently moved across state lines quickly, often to red states like Texas, pregnant people are facing challenges accessing reproductive health care in detention centers.
Unaccompanied minors who lack immigration documentation are at high risk for trafficking and other forms of harm, so they fall under the care of the office of refugee resettlement (ORR), which previously had facilities across the country capable of caring for children under the age of 18 who are pregnant.
Since July, more than a dozen pregnant children have been moved to a single facility in the small town of San Benito, along the south Texas border. The children kept in Texas are as young as 13, and about half are pregnant because of rape, according to a joint investigation by the Texas Newsroom and the California Newsroom. In Texas, abortion is banned in nearly all circumstances, including rape and incest.
“It’s a choice to ensure zero abortions,” said Jonathan White, a former top official working with children’s programs in the ORR under the Obama and Trump administrations. When a pregnant child is moved to Texas, “as long as she is in Texas, she can’t access an abortion – without a federal official needing to deny her an abortion”, he said.
ICE has detained this high schooler for 10 months. Here’s what he and his classmates want you to know
The students at Ellis Prep academy – like most high schoolers – have a lot on their mind right now.
Essay deadlines, college applications, younger siblings and dance rehearsals. But also, the immigration operations across the US and the president’s goal of “mass deportations”.
This small high school in the Bronx is one of the few in New York City that is dedicated exclusively to students who recently arrived in the US.
In May last year, 20-year-old Dylan Lopez Contreras – a senior at Ellis – was detained at a routine immigration court hearing. He was completing his education, which had been disrupted by the arduous journey he had made from Venezuela to the US border. Then suddenly, he disappeared from class. And his name was all over the local and national news. According to his lawyers, he was the first New York public school student detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He has been detained at the Moshannon Valley ICE processing center in Philipsburg, Pennsylvania, ever since.
“It was a shock,” said Roger, one of his friends at Ellis.
In the months since Dylan’s arrest, Roger and other students have tried to process their anger and their grief about what happened while rallying support for their friend. They have also tried to imagine the lives they want to live, and a world they want to live in, after they graduate high school.
Austin bar shooting leaves three dead, including suspect, and 14 wounded
The FBI’s joint terrorism taskforce has been called in to help investigate a deadly mass shooting in downtown Austin, Texas, on Sunday morning in which a gunman opened fire in front of a bar popular with university students, killing two people and injuring 14 others before being fatally shot by police.
An FBI official, Alex Doran, told reporters at a press conference that it was too early to determine the shooter’s motivation. But he added that evidence found on the suspect and in his car indicated a “potential nexus to terrorism”
The Associated Press reported that officials had identified the suspect as Ndiaga Diagne, 53, a US citizen who first came to the US in 2000 from Senegal, married an American six years later and naturalized in 2013. He spent some years in New York before moving to Texas.
Law enforcement sources told Reuters that in addition to investigating potential terrorist motivations, investigators are also looking at the suspect’s previous history of mental health issues.
Marjorie Taylor Greene Blasts Trump Admin As 'Sick F**king Liars' As Iran Strikes Divide GOP
The United States’ early Saturday morning joint military operation with Israel against Iran divided Republicans, some praising President Donald Trump, but others warning against the possibility of getting into a foreign war.
“I am opposed to this War. This is not ‘America First,’” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) said on X, adding that he and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) will force a congressional vote on war. “The Constitution requires a vote, and your Representative needs to be on record as opposing or supporting this war.”
The president announced Saturday that the U.S. has begun “major combat operations in Iran,” which the defense department is calling “Operation Epic Fury.”
Trump seemed to urge regime change, encouraging the Iranian public to “take over” their government, which he claimed has continued to develop its nuclear program with plans to develop missiles to reach the U.S.
Former Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene lashed out in multiple posts on X against the Trump administration, which she noted had “promised to put America FIRST and Make America Great Again.”
“The Trump admin actually asked in a poll how many casualties voters were willing to accept in a war with Iran???,” the MAGA firebrand and former close Trump ally wrote. “How about ZERO you bunch of sick fucking liars. We voted for America First and ZERO wars.”
More...
More Articles...
- Cuba faces ‘zero hour’ as Trump, Rubio put squeeze on regime
- The Latest: US, Israel pound Iran as Trump signals willingness to talk to new leadership
- Iran live updates: 3 US troops killed; poll shows low approval
- Medical firm that posted NJ jobs linked to detention center says it won’t work with ICE
Page 1 of 1174
