• Iranian Kurdistan: Bazar shop owners’ strike enters its 3rd week in the city of Baneh
Shop owners and Bazar merchants in the city of Baneh, near the western borders of Iran, again closed their shops on Sunday for the 15th day in the row.This general strike in the city of Babeh, which has expanded to 3 major western provinces of Kurdistan, Kermanshah and west Azerbaijan, started on April 15th in protest to the closer of border crossings between Iran and Iraq and also against the sudden increase of tariffs on imported merchandize.
It is worth noting that merchants of western provinces, bordering with Iraq, live on the money they make from cross border dealings.
• Rival newspaper head arrested over ‘Immorality’ report
The head of Iran regime’s so called reformist newspaper ‘Shargh’ was arrested after residents of a northeastern city accused the paper of defamation over a report on “Immorality” there, Iranian media said Sunday.
Mehdi Rahmanian was “summoned (by the courts) after a complaint by a group of residents of the Shahid Rajai neighbourhood of Mashhad,” the semi-official ISNA news agency reported, quoting the city’s deputy prosecutor Hassan Heydari.
“The newspaper had described some of the district’s women as corrupts.”
• Pompeo pushes hard on Iranian regime
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arrived inSaudi Arabia on Saturday on a hastily arranged visit to the Middle East as the United States aims to muster support for new sanctions against Iran.The visit to Riyadh, Jerusalem and Amman just two days after Pompeo was sworn-in comes as President Donald Trump is set to decide whether to pull out of the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran that is still supported by European powers.
• Iranian American businessmen arrested for selling auto parts to Iran
SAN FRANCISCO, April 28 (Xinhua) — Three San Francisco Bay Area-based businessmen have been arrested on charges of allegedly selling auto parts to Iran by violating U.S. trade sanctions against Tehran, a local media report said Saturday.Sadr Emad-Vaez, Pouran Aazad and Hassan Ali Moshir-Fatemi, who are listed as executives for a Tehran-based manufacturing operation, were accused of being engaged in transactions involving the illegal export of goods and services to Iran, the report said, quoting sources with the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Northern California District.
• Iran regime releases Mullah-approved messaging app to replace banned Telegram
with emoji featuring women in hijabs carrying ‘Death to America’ placards, Iranian regime has released a new home-made messenger app that includes emojis featuring women in hijabs carrying ‘Death to America’ placards. ‘Soroush’ has a set of emojis that display veiled women holding political text. The app was released to replace the popular messaging service Telegram.