JEDDAH: Thousands of Iranians took to the streets again on Friday as a six-week wave of nationwide protests showed no sign of abating.

Security forces opened fire on demonstrators in Zahedan in the southeast, dissidents said the regime had lost control of the northern Kurdish city of Mahabad, and half the members of the notorious Basij militia in Tehran failed to turn up for work enforcing the crackdown on protests.

LONDON: Forty days in and the protests that have rocked Iran since the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini at the hands of the regime’s notorious morality police show no sign of abating, yet experts remain divided over whether the movement can achieve real change. 

Multiple waves of anti-government protest have rocked Iran over the past two decades, from the 1999 Salam newspaper disorders, in which seven students died, to the 2009 Green Movement, which ended after 72 protesters were killed by security forces. 

RABAT: Moroccan police on Friday arrested 32 migrants as they tried to set sail for Spain, authorities said, including six Moroccans and 26 from other African nations to the south.
The group were arrested on the coast with an inflatable boat near the southern town of Tantan, which lies some 100 kilometers (60 miles) from Spain’s Canary Islands, the DGSN security service said.
At least 11,500 migrants made their way to the Canary Islands this year, according to Spain.

BAGHDAD: Iraq’s parliament has approved the government of Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani after more than a year of political paralysis, but the war-ravaged country is far from reaching safe shores.
Sudani now faces the gargantuan task of delivering on pledges to fight corruption and offer job opportunities to the country’s disaffected youth, all while grappling with an unpredictable political opponent.

CAIRO: More than 1,800 figures, including senior officials, businessmen, investors, intellectuals, innovators and media professionals are attending the 50th-anniversary celebrations of Egypt-UAE relations being held in Cairo from Oct. 26-28.

Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly and UAE Minister of Cabinet Affairs Mohammed Abdullah Al-Gergawi attended the celebrations held under the slogan “Egypt and the UAE are one heart.”