ANKARA: After the meeting of Turkish and Egyptian foreign ministers in Cairo on Saturday — the first such visit after a decade of strained ties — the question now is: How might this dialogue translate into action?
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu and his Egyptian counterpart Sameh Shoukry discussed several issues, including Libya — where they support opposing sides, Cyprus and maritime disagreements in the Eastern Mediterranean.

TEHRAN: An Iranian court sentenced two people to death over an October attack on a shrine in the southern city of Shiraz that cost over a dozen lives, the judiciary said Saturday.
The pair were convicted of assisting in “corruption on earth, armed rebellion and acting against national security,” the judiciary’s Mizan Online website reported, citing Kazem Moussavi, the chief justice of Fars province.

TRIPOLI: Omar Zlitni holds a decades-old, black-and-white photo of himself as a boxer in his prime, posing in shorts and a training vest before Libya’s then-dictator, Muammar Qaddafi, banned his beloved sport.
Boxing was “in his blood,” said the 63-year-old Tripoli resident who proudly keeps the image as his phone’s wallpaper.
In 1979, he was just 19 when boxing, along with wrestling and other combat sports, was banned by Qaddafi, who considered such contests a threat to his personality cult.

DAOUAR HICHER, Tunisia: “We’re sick of being seen as thugs,” said Mohamed Ali Ayari, a rapper from a down-at-heel Tunis district, where jobless youth are finding a voice through music, cinema and photography.
The Tunisian capital’s working-class districts have suffered from decades of state neglect and poor services, and residents say the stigma attached to their neighborhoods shuts them out of the job market.
“This contempt and these prejudices really complicate our lives,” said Ayari, a resident of the overcrowded Douar Hicher suburb.

ANKARA: The helmet-topped engineer drove his pointy instrument into the concrete to test whether Durmus Uygun’s building will crumble when the feared big quake finally strikes Istanbul.
“I’m pretty confident but my children aren’t convinced, so we’re having this test done,” said Uygun, who lives in one of the Turkish megalopolis’ poorer and more densely packed neighborhoods.
“If the result is good, we will live in peace. But who knows where we will be when the earthquake hits? We may be at the supermarket or at work — that’s what scares us.”