Mehr

Award-winning dissident Iranian film-maker Jafar Panahi was arrested Monday, the third director to be detained in less than a week, the Mehr news agency said.

Panahi, 62, has won a slew of awards at international festivals for films that have critiqued modern Iran, including the top prize in Berlin for "Taxi" in 2015, and best screenplay at Cannes for his film "Three Faces" in 2018.

Deaths in Iran from coronavirus have hit 43, the highest number outside China, and the total number of infected people has risen to 593, an Iranian health official said on Feb. 29.

As several countries in the Middle East reported cases of the coronavirus stemming from Iran, the country is at the epicenter of the outbreak in the region.

Turkey has started to screen travelers arriving from Iran at border gates and is refusing entry to anyone with signs of illness after four people died from the new virus that emerged in China, along with 750 suspected cases.

AFP - A strong 6.0-magnitude earthquake struck western Iran near the border with Iraq early Sunday, killing two people and injuring more than 250, officials said.

The shallow quake hit 26 kilometres (16 miles) southwest of the city of Javanrud in Kermanshah province, the US Geological Survey said, near the site of a powerful quake last year that killed hundreds.

TEHRAN - More than 29,000 Iranian nationals visited Bulgaria during 2017, the Bulgarian ambassador to Tehran has said.   

Over 29,000 Iranians applied for Bulgarian visas last year; some 95 percent of whom requested for tourist visas, Mehr quoted Christo Polendakov as saying on Tuesday.

Iran has called the Saudi-led economic siege of Qatar unacceptable and has called for dialogue to solve the diplomatic crisis. As long as the Gulf stalemate continues, Tehran has promised to provide air, sea and land support to its "brother" country.

Iran has received its first delivery of S-300 air defense systems from Russia, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hussein Jaber Ansari said on April 11.