Iran carrier begins direct flights to Venezuela
AP, Tehran
Iran’s second largest airline has begun direct flights to Venezuela, as the two countries cultivate closer ties in the face of U.S. sanctions.
Iran’s official IRNA news agency says Mahan airline’s first flight to Venezuela left Tehran on Monday carrying a Foreign Ministry delegation.
Russian director Serebrennikov freed from house arrest
AFP, Moscow
A Russian court on Monday ordered the release from house arrest of renowned film and theatre director Kirill Serebrennikov who is on trial on embezzlement charges.
A Moscow city court judge overturned a decision by a lower tribunal last week to extend his arrest for three more months, Serebrennikov’s lawyer told AFP. The 49-year-old head of Moscow’s Gogol Centre theatre-who supporters say is facing politically motivated charges-has been detained since August 2017.
Tanzania to ban single-use plastics by July
Reuters, Dodoma
Tanzania plans to ban the production, importation, sale and use of all single-use plastic bags by July, to help tackle pollution from non-biodegradable waste.
The East African nation is the latest country to make a formal commitment to phase out single-use non-biodegradable plastics, which have been identified by the United Nations as one of the world’s biggest environmental challenges.
After cyclone, Mozambique now faces hunger
AP, Bopira
Mozambique’s first disaster was a cyclone. The second has been cholera. Now hunger could be the third. The raging floodwaters that made a large part of central Mozambique a vast inland sea are draining, laying bare a severe lack of food for the months ahead.
Cyclone Idai swept in from the Indian Ocean on March 10 shortly before thousands of subsistence farmers planned to bring in the harvest. Mozambique’s government said that more than 1.7 million acres of crop fields were flooded.
