Iranian authorities appeared to be cutting off internet access Thursday in the capital and some other regions of the country as mass protests and chanting against the government continue. Multiple sources in Tehran told CBS News the internet was down in the capital.

The NetBlocks monitoring organization said at about 8:30 local time in Iran that its live data “show #Iran is now in the midst of a nationwide internet blackout; the incident follows a series of escalating digital censorship measures targeting protests across the country and hinders the public’s right to communicate at a critical moment.”

One CBS News source in the capital said there were “huge crowds out across Tehran. Unprecedented,” and confirmed that the internet was down for most people in the city. He said some people, with more robust, more reliable business accounts could still get online. Not long after, that source became unreachable, suggesting the blackout had widened even further.

There were reports on social media, largely by anti-regime activists, that web service was also down or severely restricted in the cities of Esfahan, Lodegan, Abdanan, and parts of Shiraz.

The web outages came as Iranians began chanting out of their windows against the regime, following a call by exiled Iranian Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, the son of the former U.S.-backed shah, to make their voices heard at 8 p.m. local time (noon Eastern). Analysts and insiders told CBS News the scale of the response to Pahalvi’s call could determine whether the deadly, 12-day-old protests fizzle out as previous rounds of unrest have, or grow into a major challenge to the government, and provoke a possible wider crackdown.

“All of the huge crowds in my neighborhood are pro-Pahlavi and from several areas my sources report the same — pro-Pahlavi crowds are prevailing, undeniably,” the source in Tehran told CBS News, calling it “monarchists responding to Reza.”

So far the unrest has left at least 39 people dead, including at least four members of the security services, and seen more than 2,260 others detained, according to the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency.

NetBlocks said earlier that its “data show the loss of connectivity on #Iran internet backbone provider TCI in the restive city of Kermanshah as protests spread across the nation in their 12th day; the incident comes amid rising casualties with indications of disruptions in multiple regions.”

Iranian authorities regularly restrict or disable internet access when they expect significant protests or other potentially destabilizing events.

President Mahsoud Pezeshkian, seen as a reformer but subordinate to Iran’s longtime Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, intimated ahead of his election in 2024 that he would free up the internet and make more websites accessible. It remains tightly restricted, however. Social media sites such as TikTok, Facebook and X are officially banned, as is access to U.S. and European news sites, including CBS News.

Many young, tech-savvy Iranians have become adept at getting around the restrictions, but it’s a cumbersome process, and when the regime slows down internet speeds at politically sensitive times, the whole system can become unusable.

SAO PAULO — Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Thursday vetoed a bill that could reduce the 27-year prison sentence of his predecessor Jair Bolsonaro for the far-right leader’s failed 2023 coup attempt.

Lula, who had already pledged to block the proposal, announced the decision during a ceremony at the presidential palace in capital Brasilia. It came on the third anniversary of the riots led by Bolsonaro’s supporters that destroyed government buildings and helped build the case against the former president.

The Senate passed the bill in December. Brazil’ s Congress could override Lula’s veto, but analysts say that could be a risky move for lawmakers ahead of next October’s general elections. The 80-year-old leftist president is currently a frontrunner in a likely battle with Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro, one of the former president’s sons.

“We don’t have the right of forgetting our past. That’s why we don’t accept dictatorships, civilian or military,” Lula told members of the three branches of power during the ceremony. “January 8th is marked by history as the day of our democracy’s victory. It is victory against those who tried to seize power through force, ignoring popular will expressed in the polls.”

Lula narrowly won his third term against Bolsonaro, who was later ruled ineligible to run until 2030 for abuse of power during the campaign trail. In November the former president started serving for his attempted coup conviction, extending that deadline for the 70-year-old leader until 2033. There are other cases pending against him.

Lower house speaker Hugo Motta and the president of Brazil’s Senate, Davi Alcolumbre, did not attend the ceremony. Bolsonaro supporters also destroyed part of congress during the 2023 riots, often compared to the storming of Capitol Hill by voters of U.S. President Donald Trump one year earlier.

If Lula had not vetoed the bill, the count of attempting a coup d’etat would be absorbed into another charge, which would then reduce Bolsonaro’s prison sentence. Other convicts linked to the coup trial could have their jail time reduced by two-thirds.

Bolsonaro’s lawyers have urged authorities to put him in house arrest due to his poor health. He has been in and out of hospitals since he was stabbed by a man found to be mentally ill during the 2018 election campaign.

Neither the former president nor his lawyers have made comments about Lula’s decision.

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