VOA – Lebanon confirmed its first coronavirus case Friday, a 45-year-old woman who had arrived from Iran and was being quarantined in a hospital. “We confirmed the first case today,” Lebanese health minister Hassan Hamad told a news conference, adding that two other suspected cases are being investigated. The woman arrived Thursday on a flight from the city of Qom …

Iran Human Rights (IHR) – Two prisoners were hanged on February 12, 2020, at the central prison of Qom, a city located around 140 km south of Tehran. Iranian authorities have not yet announced the executions. According to IHR sources, on the morning of Wednesday, February 12, death-row prisoners Naeim Zavareh and Ali Dadkhah were hanged at Qom prison.  They …

carbonbrief.org – In the latest article in a series on how some of the world’s key emitters are responding to climate change, Carbon Brief profiles Iran, a major petrostate stricken by long-running droughts.Carbon Brief’s country profile series. Iran was the world’s eighth largest emitter of greenhouse gases in 2015. It is a resource-rich nation with enormous reserves of oil and …

Reuters -A global dirty money watchdog is likely to place Iran on its blacklist on Friday after it failed to comply with international anti-terrorism financing norms, a move that would further isolate the country from financial markets, two diplomats said. The decision comes after more than three years of warnings from the Paris-based Financial Action Taskforce (FATF) urging Tehran to …

Radiofarda – Iranians on Friday headed to polls to cast ballots in parliamentary elections a day after two coronavirus deaths were reported in the country. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has called for “massive turnout to frustrate America”. Voters will be choosing from over 7,000 candidates for the 290 seats of the Iranian Parliament, the Majles. But around 9,000 other …

Radiofarda – Several movies screened at the Fajr Film Festival that marked the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran are found to have been funded by the Islamic Republic’s notorious Intelligence Organizations, Radio Farda’s investigation has found. In one of the latest cases of Iranian intelligence organization’s increasing activities in the area of film production, the Intelligence Ministry …

Radiofarda – After two people died of Coronavirus in Iran on Wednesday, officials hinted at more cases of infections, fueling an atmosphere of deep apprehension among the public and expressions of distrust toward the government. The revelation that the virus has reached Iran is taken by many as an admission that infections may had already spread in Qom, the religious …

Radiofarda – The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Iran, Javaid Rehman, in his latest report has highlighted the mid-November anti-regime protests that shook the Islamic Republic for four days. Rehman has asserted in the report that he was “shocked” at the number of deaths, acute injuries, and stories of ill-treatment of persons detained during …

Al-Arabia – Iranians began voting on Friday in a parliamentary election unlikely to change the Islamic Republic’s troubled relations with the United States, after thousands of candidates were barred from the field in favor of hardliners. The disqualification of some 9,000 potential candidates, most of them reformists and moderates, raised the possibility of lower-than-usual turnout.State television reported that polling started at …

RFL/RE – Iraq and Kuwait have temporarily restricted the entry of Iranians into their countries in an effort to stem the outbreak of the deadly coronavirus following Iran’s announcement that two people there had died from the disease. The Iraqi Border Crossing Authority on February 20 said Iranian travelers will be denied entry to Iraq through shared border crossings for …