Middle East & North Africa

BEIRUT (AP) — She is a nurse at a Beirut hospital, and still Rita Harb can’t find her grandfather’s heart drugs.

She has searched pharmacies up and down Lebanon, called friends abroad. Not even her connections with doctors could secure the drugs. Unlike many amid Lebanon’s financial crash, she can afford them — they just aren’t there.

To get by, her 85-year-old grandfather is substituting his medicine with more pills of a smaller concentration to reach his dosage. That too could run out soon.

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — For over half a century, a massive graveyard on the edge of Iran’s capital has provided a final resting place for this country’s war dead, its celebrities and artists, its thinkers and leaders and all those in between.

But Behesht-e-Zahra is now struggling to keep up with the coronavirus pandemic ravaging Iran, with double the usual number of bodies arriving each day and grave diggers excavating thousands of new plots.

10 Nov 2020; MEMO: Turkish security services have recently arrested dozens of people suspected of communicating with members of Daesh in Syria, Anadolu news agency reported.

The agency said the first operation involved raids on 11 areas in Istanbul and resulted in the arrest of 17 people "suspected of carrying out activities in the name of ISIS [Daesh] and communicating with members of the organisation in Syria."

10 Nov 2020; MEMO: Iran will not renegotiate the terms of the 2015 nuclear deal with the US, a spokesperson for the country's Foreign Ministry said yesterday.

Saeed Khatibzadeh said: "The nuclear agreement is a thing of the past, and it cannot be reopened and renegotiated by anyone," in reference to US President-elect Joe Biden who is due to take office at the end of January.

10 Nov 2020; MEMO: Iran has revealed a secret underground missile base used by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's Aerospace Force.

The base, which looks like an underground city with a network of long tunnels, included Iranian-designed, liquid-fuelled, medium-range ballistic missile (MRBM) dubbed Emad.

10 Nov 2020; MEMO: Palestinian Authority (PA) Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said yesterday that Israel has to choose between the two-state solution or a demographic meltdown, Wafa news agency reported.

"The Israeli occupation government must stop its colonial plans and stop seizing our lands and building thousands of settlement units," said Shtayyeh.

10 Nov 2020; MEMO: The Iranian Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, has called on Gulf states to resort to dialogue for the sake of the region's prosperity, saying, "Trump is leaving, and we and our neighbours will remain".

"Betting on outsiders to provide security is never a good gamble," Zarif wrote on Twitter on Sunday evening, adding: "We extend our hand to our neighbors for dialog to resolve differences".

10 Nov 2020; MEMO: The Israeli security apparatus hopes that the election of Joe Biden as president of the United States will help Tel Aviv restore security coordination with the Palestinian Authority, the Maariv newspaper reported yesterday.

10 Nov 2020; MEMO: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh today telephoned President Mahmoud Abbas to convey his condolences after PLO Secretary General Dr Saeb Erekat died of covid.

In his tribute to the late senior negotiator, Haniyeh praised Erekat's patriotic stance on numerous occasions in defence of the rights of the Palestinian people and their just cause. According to the Hamas leader Erekat was a sincere son of Palestine and a loyal fighter for the Palestinian people's freedom and independence.

10 Nov 2020; MEMO: The Journalist Support Committee (JSC) yesterday warned of the increasing Israeli violations against Palestinian journalists, noting that there are currently 26 Palestinian journalists inside Israeli jails.