BERLIN: The Berlin film festival, long a champion of Iran’s embattled independent directors, is spotlighting its citizens’ fight for basic rights with a series of screenings, events and a red-carpet protest.
French-Iranian actor Golshifteh Farahani, who is serving on the jury for the top prizes with president Kristen Stewart, said as the festival kicked off Thursday that cinema was a crucial fuel for the freedom movement.
“In a country like Iran that is a dictatorship, art is not only an intellectual or philosophical thing, it’s essential, it’s like oxygen,” she said.

AL-MUKALLA: Chairman of Yemen’s Presidential Leadership Council Rashad Al-Alimi has urged the US to provide the Yemeni army with seized Iranian weaponry destined for the Houthis in order to replenish its arsenal and battle the militia.

Al-Alimi said on Saturday at the Munich Security Conference that the US turned over the traffickers of the seized weapons to the Yemeni authorities along with just a handful of rifles as evidence during the trials.

DAMASCUS: Israeli airstrikes targeted a residential neighborhood in central Damascus early Sunday, Syrian state news reported.
Syrian state media agency SANA, citing a source in the Damascus police command, reported that an unspecified number of people had been killed and wounded.
Loud explosions were heard over the capital around 12:30 a.m. local time, and SANA reported that Syrian air defenses were “confronting hostile targets in the sky around Damascus.”

ADIYAMAN: A 17-year-old high school student has captured Turkish hearts after he filmed a farewell message to his loved ones as he was trapped under the rubble of his home during last week’s earthquake.
Taha Erdem and his family were fast asleep when a 7.8 magnitude quake hit their hometown of Adiyaman on Feb. 6. Taha was abruptly woken by violent tremors shaking the four-story apartment building in a blue-collar neighborhood of the central Anatolian city.

LONDON: Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Saturday reaffirmed his support for a stable, secure, and sovereign Iraq and the US’ commitment to cooperate with Baghdad under the strategic framework agreement between the two countries.

His comments came during a meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Al-Sudani on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference in Germany, US State Department Spokesperson Ned Price said in a statement.