Crypto News: Lifting the veil

Iran's rebellion hasn't dislodged its clerical leadership, but in some ways it has changed women's lives.

It is six months since 22-year-old Mahsa Amini was arrested for allegedly flouting Islamic dress codes. Her death in custody sparked the biggest revolts since 1979, and those street protests have now waned.

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What is left is a substantial shift, mainly across urban Iran. More women than ever before are deciding to unveil and quietly test government-imposed dress rules.

As the world marks International Women's Day, such pushing of boundaries is fraught with risk in Iran. The image of the enveloping black chador is tied to the Islamic Republic's more than four-decade rule, now under a hardline government installed in 2021 and led by a potential successor to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

It also comes at a time of other important challenges for the Iranian regime with repercussions beyond its borders.

Talks with the US and other world powers over containing its nuclear program have frozen. As diplomacy falters, international nuclear inspectors have detected uranium enrichment levels in Iran close to weapons-grade.

Israel, unnerved by that development and concerned Iran is seeking air defenses from Russia, has shortened its timeline for any potential strike on an atomic program it views as an existential threat. And as Moscow's war on Ukraine rages almost 2,000 miles away, Tehran is building a transcontinental trade route to Russia that is beyond the reach of any foreign intervention.

Back home, a spate of suspected poisoning attacks on schoolgirls since November has once more underlined the threats to women and girls. After officials first dismissed them or put the effects down to "stress," Khamenei this week called the incidents a "big crime" that warranted severe punishment.

Videos shared on Twitter showed protests outside several schools last week. In some of them, chants of "death to the dictator" and "death to the child-killing regime" can be heard.

It's a level of public defiance unthinkable just six months ago. — Sylvia Westall

A demonstration against the death of Mahsa Amini in Tehran in September 2022. Source: Getty Images

Tune in for our weekly global politics Twitter Space, which will look at the political and economic turmoil hitting emerging market nations from Nigeria to Pakistan. You can listen from 8am ET/1pm London via this link. And if you are enjoying this newsletter, sign up here.

Easing limits | The US is set to lift Covid-19 testing requirements for travelers from China as soon as this week, sources say, a significant step toward normalizing links between the two countries as the pandemic recedes. The US ordered all travelers older than 2 to provide a negative test before entering the US in January, after China's pivot away from strict Covid restrictions led to a massive outbreak.

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Seeking refuge | Argentina is providing an unlikely haven for Russians fleeing their homeland over Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine, Scott Squires reports. Despite economic crises and inflation near 100% in the Latin American nation, Russians have been arriving in droves, including many heavily pregnant women undertaking the journey of more than 12,000 miles to ensure their children gain Argentine citizenship at birth.

The former head of Gazprombank's Swiss unit and three colleagues went on trial in Zurich today over financial transactions made by a cello-playing confidant of Putin's.
Follow our rolling coverage of Russia's war in Ukraine here.

China's latest attempt to boost its flagging birth rate is a crackdown on betrothal gifts, or caili. It's a tradition where the groom-to-be pays a "bride price" to the woman's family to demonstrate his sincerity and wealth, while also compensating them for raising a daughter in a country that has long favored sons. Almost three-quarters of marriages in China involve the custom, but few people expect the clampdown to work.

Brexit hope | UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's deal to solve the bitter dispute with the European Union over Northern Ireland's trading arrangements has sparked hope in the City of London that the two sides could finally formalize a pledge to work together on setting rules for banks and financial markets.

Targeting TikTok | The White House endorsed a bipartisan bill that could give the US president authority to impose a ban or other restrictions on foreign-owned technologies and applications such as TikTok. The support may hasten passage and break a deadlock over how to address national security and privacy concerns around the popular Chinese social media app used by roughly 100 million Americans.

The US Federal Trade Commission plans to depose Elon Musk as part of its probe into Twitter's privacy and data security practices, sources say.

Coalition tensions | Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez's coalition faces the worst threat to its unity so far, after its junior partner voted against changing a law that unintentionally lowered hundreds of sentences for sex offenders. Opposition by the far-left party Unidas Podemos to changes pushed by its Socialist partners could hurt both parties in a key election year set to decide Sanchez's fate.

Bloomberg TV starting Monday March 13 will relaunch Balance of Power at 5pm to 6pm ET weekdays with Washington correspondents Annmarie Hordern and Joe Mathieu. You can watch and listen on Bloomberg channels and online here.

US President Joe Biden is set to announce the details next week of a nuclear submarine deal with the leaders of Australia and the UK in California, sources say.
Greek public sector workers are walking off their jobs today as the nation's worst-ever train crash last week sparks a political backlash against Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
A growing divide between US Senate Leader Mitch McConnell and his fellow Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was on show yesterday over Fox News's airing of security footage from the Jan. 6 insurrection.
The M23 rebel group clashed with Democratic Republic of Congo soldiers, defying a ceasefire in the country that was meant to go into effect yesterday, the United Nations says.
An International Monetary Fund loan for Ethiopia is "definitely back on the table," S&P Global Ratings says, a key step to restart the Horn of Africa nation's debt-restructuring plans.

And finally ... The number of high-containment labs around the world conducting potentially risky scientific research handling deadly viruses and organisms is surging, despite a lack of global agreement on how to make sure they're safe. As Riley Griffin and Madison Muller explain, scientific safety has re-emerged as a high-stakes global issue since the US Department of Energy suggested it had intelligence showing a lab leak was the most likely origin of the Covid-19 pandemic.

A technician enters a Covid-19 research laboratory at the African Health Research Institute in Durban, South Africa, in 2021. Photographer: Waldo Swiegers/Bloomberg