TEHARN: Iranian police fired tear gas on Saturday to disperse a protest rally in the country’s west following the funeral ceremony for a young woman who died while in police custody in Tehran earlier this week, the semi-official Fars news agency reported.

JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan will meet during the UN General Assembly in New York, Lapid’s office said on Saturday.
The meeting marks another milestone for the countries as they work to mend long-strained ties. Both governments expelled ambassadors in 2018 and have often traded barbs over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Last month Turkey and Israel announced they would re-appoint respective ambassadors.

TUNIS: Tunisian President Kais Saied has made new changes to electoral law that diminish the role of political parties, three months ahead of legislative elections.

TEHRAN: Iran’s president has ordered a probe in the case of a young woman who slipped into a coma while in custody in Tehran and died, state media reported on Friday. The police have said she suffered a heart attack.
According to the state-run IRNA news agency, President Ebrahim Raisi asked Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi to “investigate the cause of the incident with urgency and special attention.”
According to reports on social media, Mahsa Amini, 22, was detained earlier this week by the so-called “morality police” after officers apparently found fault with her hijab.

ANKARA: Turkey’s intelligence chief has held multiple meetings with his Syrian counterpart in Damascus over the last few weeks, a sign of Russian efforts to encourage a thaw between states on opposite sides of Syria’s war, four sources said.
A regional source aligned with Damascus said that Hakan Fidan, head of Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization, and Syrian intelligence chief Ali Mamlouk met as recently as this week in the Syrian capital.