Anti-government protests over the economy turn deadly in Iran.
It's World Business Express from the BBC World Service.
I'm Gideon Long.
Plus, the price of cigarettes looks set to rise in India.
What will that mean for tobacco farmers?
And London's FTSE 100 stock market index starts the new year with a record high.
But we start in the Iranian capital, Tehran.
That's the sound of protesters attacking a police station on Thursday night.
The authorities say seven people have been killed in violence across the country.
Today Friday, marks the sixth day in a row of nationwide anti-government protests, triggered by a sharp drop in the value of the currency and the rising cost of living.
Donald Trump says the US is, in his words, locked and loaded and ready to go if the Iranian authorities kill peaceful protesters.
This young woman spoke to the BBC's NewsHour about why she's protesting.
We don't have any kind of liberty here.
We fight every day.
We face the most brutal things every day.
We want to end it, even with the price of our lives.
We don't have anything.
The trigger this time was the economy.
I spoke to Dr Sanam Vakil, a senior research fellow at the Chatham House think tank in London.
Since President Trump came back into office last year, he has renewed enforcement of sanctions on Iran, meaning Iran's oil exports are declining.
It hasn't been able to repatriate its revenues that are held and locked in bank accounts abroad.
And this, of course, is having a massive knock-on effect internally, with the currency having almost collapsed.
And the impact is trickling down.
Ordinary people are struggling to make ends meet.
On top of it, there is huge inflation rumored to be over 50%, but we don't have formal statistics.
How has the government responded?
They've changed the head of the central bank.
What else have they said or done?
The Iranian government right now is in crisis management mode.
There's not much that they can do.
The Iranian economy is also heavily subsidized.
There are huge amount of benefits that go out in terms of fuel subsidies, food subsidies, and they need to reduce those subsidies and perhaps have them be more targeted.
So they're in a bit of a bind.
They are trying to move around the pieces and perhaps show an effort at reform, but how they can actually placate the population and get them off the streets without resorting to further violence is the real challenge that they're facing.
We've seen many protests in Iran in recent years, and all of them really have eventually petered out.
What do you think is likely to happen now in these protests?
I think the protests are going to continue particularly in small towns around the country.
The government, of course, is going to try to contain those protests from spreading and also make sure that they don't really take hold in a meaningful way in the big cities and particularly in the capital of Tehran.
President Trump has, of course, also made some threats of his own, suggesting that if there is loss of life, that the US is going to intervene.
I would be surprised to see that, but that could empower protesters also.
So I think we're going to be in for a couple of weeks of a standoff, but we can say for certain that protests will resurface again.
Dr. Sanam Vakil there.
Let's go to India where big increases in tax on cigarettes are hitting the headlines.
From February 1st, the government is changing how cigarettes are taxed.
Tobacco farmers in India say their livelihoods are under threat after the government imposed a new tax on cigarettes.
Analysts say the duty could mean an increase of between 22% and 28% in the cost of cigarettes.
This in a country of around 100 million smokers.
Here's Finance Minister Pankaj Chowdhury announcing the passage of the bill through Parliament.
At the moment, India's total tax incidence on cigarettes is approximately 53 of the retail price, which is substantially lower than the World Health Organization's recommended benchmark of 75.
Well, Murali Babu is the president of the Federation of All India Pharma Associations.
Tobacco farmers, and tobacco farming is under a lot of pressure due to the various restrictions that have been proposed by WHO and the nations are implementing.
But the problem is what the government is thinking is like.
High increase in taxes will discourage the consumers.
But, on the other hand, what's happening is the consumers are getting diverted towards cheaper products which are not duty paid.
And the demand from the farmers would decrease as a result.
So you fear that the cigarette companies will put up their prices, which will mean that fewer people will smoke, which will reduce income for the farmers.
Yeah, there could be a considerable amount of decrease in the smoking percentage.
But what we fear is that there will be a shift towards the smuggled cigarettes or other tobacco products.
The government is surely right in trying to discourage smoking, isn't it?
Surely that's a good thing, because health issues related to smoking cost India billions of dollars every year.
So shouldn't you be supporting that move?
What we have been talking about all these years is Even our livelihoods matter.
And one of the government agencies which is called the Central Tobacco Research Institute.
In earlier situations, when they've been asked for a report, they have clearly stated that there is no viable commercial alternative to tobacco in these regions.
But shouldn't you be supporting efforts by the Indian government to reduce smoking, which is clearly damaging for the health of Indians?
Yeah, see, we can't deny that fact, not absolutely.
But the problem is there has to be a balance between our livelihoods and the government's longer plan for the nation.
We can't be just pushed into a corner.
And this new tax doesn't come in for another month.
Do you think there's any chance that the government might be persuaded to change its mind?
Yeah, we are.
Hoping for it, we've started talking to the members of the parliament to represent our case.
And we hope something happens because there are a lot of farmers' lives that are at stake.
And India cannot be in an isolated position, because other countries are also promoting their own farmers.
So what we want the government to do is strike a balance between the health policies and the livelihood of the farmers.
That was Murali Babu, President of the Federation of All India Farmer Associations.
Factory activity in the Eurozone area contracted further last month.
The S&P Manufacturing Purchasing Managers Index fell to 48.8 from 49.6 in November.
Any reading below 50 signals a retreat, and that was its lowest reading in nine months.
But there was one bright spot France, where manufacturing activity grew at its fastest rate in three and a half years.
Let's take a look at a few other stories.
I'm joined by Randeep Somail, Fund Manager at M&G Investments.
Happy New Year to you, Randeep.
It's the first trading day of the year and already London's FTSE 100 Stock Market Index has broken through a key barrier, hasn't it?
Tell our listeners what's happened to date.
Yes, Happy New Year.
A very positive start for the FTSE 100 this year.
Like you say, going through that key barrier.
It's been led by a few things.
First of all, we've seen commodity prices being very strong with copper at $12,500 a tonne.
That's pushed the miners up.
But also on the other side, we actually saw some negative data economic-wise coming out of the UK for the end of the year, just in terms of economic growth and sales growth, which has spurred the likelihood of interest rate cuts from the Bank of England.
Now, 80% of the FTSE 100 company's profit comes from reward.
So a weakening pound will help profitability.
And briefly Randy, we've had sale figures from the two biggest car makers of electric vehicles on the planet Tesla and BYD.
Tesla's sales down 9%, BYD's up 28%.
What do you make of those numbers? globally now we have a new EV leader in BYD.
So 2.26 million cars for 2025 means that they are well ahead of Tesla now at about 1.7 million.
Randeep Somal, fund manager at MG Investment.
Thanks for joining us.
That's it from this edition of World Business Express.
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