Middle East & North Africa

Qeshm, IRNA – Hawksbill sea turtles, likely to become extinct, have hatched out of the eggs and are on way to the southern Iranian waters of the Persian Gulf early on Sunday.

The first group of hawksbill sea turtles (eretmochelys imbricata) crawled to the water from the beach of a village in southern Iranian island of Qeshm.

A few days ago, the head of the Qeshm environment department predicted that over 2,000 turtle eggs would hatch here.

Mohammad Dakhteh said that about 80 percent of those eggs are fertile.

Tehran, IRNA – Four Iranian entities are going to sign memoranda of understanding worth 2.8 billion dollars for development studies of oil and gas fields.

The National Iranian Oil Company, Iranian petrochemical companies, the National Iranian Oil Industry Pension Fund, and the Parsian Sepehr Refining Company will ink four MoUs to allocate 2.8 billion dollars for development studies of oil and gas fields, collecting flare gases and ethane extraction.

Tehran, IRNA – Secretary of Islamic Republic of Iran Human Rights Headquarters Kazem Gharibabadi called on the international community to make a stand against the Zionist regime's "unspeakable crimes".

"How can one expect the blood-thirsty Israeli regime which headshots journalists to respect their dead bodies?" Gharibabadi asked in a Twitter message on Saturday.

"Enjoying the United States’ unwavering support for decades, the regime’s unspeakable crimes will continue with no end in sight – unless the intl. community makes a stand!" he added.

Tehran, IRNA – President Ebrahim Raisi has underscored that unity among Shias and Sunnis is considered as a strategy, not a tactic, from the standpoint of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

In a meeting with a number of Sunni scholars, Raisi said on Sunday that clerics and scholars enjoy significant position in Iran’s history.

“You Sunni clerics and thinkers have provided many services in their own country,” the president said, adding, “Shiites and Sunnis have lived together in Islamic Iran for many years.”

Buffalo (US), May 15 (AP) A white 18-year-old wearing military gear and livestreaming with a helmet camera opened fire with a rifle at a supermarket in Buffalo, killing 10 people and wounding three others Saturday in what authorities described as "racially-motivated violent extremism".

14 May 2022; MEMO: The United States' Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had intended to use Israel's infamous Pegasus spyware for its ongoing operations, a report by The New York Times has revealed.

A Tunisian official announced on Friday that his country had raised the prices of domestic consumption of electricity and natural gas in the latest series of price increases in a country suffering the worst financial crisis in its history.

The African country is seeking to reach a new loan agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for reforms that are not supported by its people, including cutting energy and food subsidies and freezing wages.

15 May 2022; MEMO: Turkey has proposed conducting an evacuation of wounded Ukrainian soldiers stranded in the southern port city of Mariupol, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan's spokesman confirmed.

In an interview with the news agency Reuters, Turkey's presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin confirmed that he himself had discussed the plan to evacuate the wounded Ukrainian soldiers from Mariupol with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Kyiv two weeks ago.

15 May 2022; MEMO: The United States has exempted territories in Syria run by the Kurdish militia the People's Protection Units (YPG) from wide-ranging sanctions, in a decision which neighbouring Turkey has condemned as an attempt to "legitimise" the group.

DUBAI, May 14 (Reuters) - United Arab Emirates strongman Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, who was formally elected president on Saturday, led a realignment of the Middle East that created a new anti-Iran axis with Israel and fought a rising tide of political Islam in the region.

Working behind the scenes for years as de facto leader, Sheikh Mohammed, 61, transformed the UAE military into a high-tech force, which coupled with its oil wealth and business hub status, extended Emirati influence internationally.