Middle East & North Africa

21 May 2021; MEMO: Greenpeace welcomed a ban by Ankara on imports of most plastic waste after the environmental group said it uncovered exports, some possibly illegal, from Britain and Germany that created "mountains" of trash in southern Turkey, Reuters reported.

The environmental group said its teams visited ten sites in Adana province and found plastic waste – most either burned or on fire – mainly from the United Kingdom, Germany, Poland and other EU countries.

20 May 2021; MEMO: Gaza's medical teams are unable to sufficiently treat those wounded in Israeli air strikes because the Strip lacks the necessary medical equipment and drugs, the Director of the Palestine Red Crescent, Bashar Murad, warned yesterday.

20 May 2021; MEMO: Israeli forces have deliberately targeted two water pipelines in the Al-Saftawi area cutting supplies to 20 per cent of the residents of Gaza City, the municipality said in a statement today.

"The Israeli air strikes on Al-Saftawi area last night damaged two main water pipelines feeding the northwestern residential areas," the statement said.

21 May 2021; MEMO: Hundreds of Iraqi protesters aboard 21 buses yesterday headed to the Iraqi-Jordanian border to protest against Israel's violence against Palestinians at the Hashemite Kingdom's border with the occupied West Bank, Anadolu news agency reported.

21 May 2021; MEMO: Iranian President Hassan Rouhani announced yesterday that the Western nations have agreed to lift the main sanctions imposed on his country, the Tasnim news agency reported.

Speaking at the inauguration of projects for the Ministry of Oil, Rouhani said: "They are in Vienna negotiating and agreeing to lift all sanctions imposed on oil, petrochemicals, shipping, insurance and the central bank."

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel and Hamas agreed to a cease-fire Thursday, halting a bruising 11-day war that caused widespread destruction in the Gaza Strip, brought life in much of Israel to a standstill and left more than 200 people dead.

At 2 a.m. local time, just as the cease-fire took effect, life returned to the streets of Gaza. People went out of their homes, some shouting “Allahu Akbar” or whistling from balconies. Many fired in the air, celebrating the truce.

FNIDEQ, Morocco (AP) — They are desperate teenagers and jobless men. They come from Morocco’s coastal towns, its mountainous east or even farther away — from sub-Saharan Africa. And they all converged on the border town of Fnideq this week, part of an extraordinary mass effort to swim or scale barbed-wire fences to get into Spain for a chance at a new life.

More than 8,000 migrants actually made it into the city of Ceuta, an enclave in North Africa that is separated from the rest of Spain by the Mediterranean — but for most of them, it was a short-lived success.

BEIRUT (AP) — Ever since their last war in 2006, Israel and Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah militia have constantly warned that a new round between them is inevitable. Yet once again, a potential trigger has gone unpulled.

Hezbollah’s shadow loomed large during Israel and Hamas’ two-week battle, with the possibility it could unleash its arsenal of missiles - far more powerful than Hamas’ - in support of the Palestinians.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Palestinians rallied by the thousands early Friday after a cease-fire took effect in the latest Gaza war, with many viewing it as costly but clear victory for the Islamic militant group Hamas over a far more powerful Israel.

TEHRAN, May 20 (Xinhua) -- Iran's President Hassan Rouhani said on Thursday that the "main agreement" to revive the 2015 nuclear deal has already been reached in the Vienna talks, and Iran's counterparts have agreed on the need to lift "all main sanctions."

"The other parties ... agree that they will lift all major sanctions, including sanctions on oil, petrochemicals, shipping, insurance, and the banking sector," Rouhani said as quoted by official news agency IRNA.