In Tehran in recent weeks, men have smashed cream pies into the faces of hapless bystanders on metro escalators. Actors posing as private taxi drivers have opened fire on passengers with red paint guns. Young people have tossed eggs at unwitting pedestrians.

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The stream of prank videos captured on Tehran's real-life streets and circulating on Iranian social media are not all fun and games to the Iranian authorities. Iranian police on Wednesday announced the arrest of 17 pranksters who posted the videos on a dozen Instagram pages, saying they'd incited public panic. The clips racked up thousands of views, attracting fans and imitators.

"Police strongly confronted such illegal acts," the country's state-run IRAN newspaper quoted Tehran police chief Gen. Hossein Rahimi as saying. "Publishing such clips plays with people's nerves, security and peace."

In the videos, the real victims of the pranks appear terrified and angry. One shaken man socked with a pie on the metro escalator grows incensed, chasing the laughing pranksters and lobbing a backpack and shoe at them before trying to beat one of the men up, cream still smeared over his face.

In one staged shooting, a prankster taxi driver films himself arguing with his supposed wife, an actress, in the front seat. When she starts screaming in a jealous rage about how he sent a heart emoji to her friend, he takes out a massive kitchen knife and pretends to decapitate her – leaving only a paint-stained wig. A horrified real passenger in the backseat frantically clambers out of the car.

"I just wanted to make people happy and also increase my Instagram followers," said the cake-throwing prankster, an information technology graduate identified by IRAN daily only by his first name, Shahab. He told the newspaper that after each prank he gives victims some $20, does their laundry and seeks their permission to publish the video on social media.

Iran's conservative authorities, many with religious sensibilities who view Western influence with suspicion, maintain tight control over the internet and block access to various websites like YouTube and Twitter. Young Iranians still manage workarounds, accessing social media through VPNs and proxies.

The government also has accelerated a long-running crackdown on what it describes as un-Islamic and immoral internet activity. Female models have landed in jail for posting photos of themselves or not wearing their mandatory headscarves outside. Pranksters and mischief-makers have been swept up on charges of spreading fear and panic with their online tomfoolery.

In 2014, police arrested a group of young Iranians who appeared in videos dancing to Pharrell Williams' hit song "Happy."

Typically detainees are released on bail and ordered to pay hefty fines.

Hard-liners, now in control of all levers of power in Iran, long have viewed social messaging and media services as part of a "soft war" by the West against the Islamic Republic. They say Westernization is attempting to tarnish the country's Islamic beliefs.

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The United Nations is proposing to pay nearly $6 million for protection in Afghanistan to Taliban-run Interior Ministry personnel, whose chief is under UN and US sanctions and wanted by the FBI, according to a UN document and a source familiar with the matter.

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The proposed funds would be paid next year mostly to subsidize the monthly wages of Taliban fighters guarding UN facilities and to provide them a monthly food allowance under an expansion of an accord with the former US-backed Afghan government, the document reviewed by Reuters shows.

The plan underscores the persisting insecurity in Afghanistan following the Islamist Taliban's takeover in August as the last US troops left, as well as a dire shortage of funds hampering the new government because of a cutoff of international financial aid.

"The United Nations has a duty as an employer to reinforce and, where necessary, supplement the capacity of host states in circumstances where UN personnel work in areas of insecurity," deputy UNN spokesman Farhan Haq wrote in an email in response to Reuters' questions about the proposed payments. He did not dispute the contents of the document.

Several experts said the proposed payments raise questions about whether they would violate US and UN sanctions on the Taliban and their top leaders, and whether the United Nations could detect diversions of funds for other purposes.

"What it comes down to is there is no proper oversight," said the source, who requested anonymity to discuss the matter.

Those under sanctions include deputy Taliban leader and Interior Ministry chief Sirajuddin Haqqani. He heads the Haqqani network, a faction blamed for some of the bloodiest attacks over 20 years of war. The United States, which says Haqqani is close to al-Qaida, is offering a $10 million reward for information leading to his arrest.

The UN Assistance Mission to Afghanistan (UNAMA) budget is "currently under review," but the mission "maintains full compliance with all UN sanctions regimes," Haq said.

He did not respond to a question about whether the proposed payments would breach US sanctions.

A US Treasury Department official said the Taliban and the Haqqani network remain designated under the US government's counterterrorism sanctions program and that unauthorized people supporting them "risk exposure to US sanctions."

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The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, declined to comment on the UN proposal.

The proposed funds would bolster the cash-strapped Taliban's ability to protect some 3,500 UN personnel in Kabul and 10 field offices. Many are striving to help the country of 39 million cope with food shortages amid a public services breakdown and an economic collapse accelerated by the evaporation of foreign financial aid. The UN document says most of a proposed $4 million security budget for 2022 shared by the 20 UN agencies operating in Afghanistan "constitutes payments in respect of supplementing host nation resources for their primary responsibility to protect UN personnel (as foreseen in our SOMA)."

SOMA stands for a Status of Mission Agreement with the former government. Under the accord, the United Nations subsidized the costs to the Interior Ministry of police who protected UN facilities, the source said.

Most of the $4 million would boost the wages of individual Taliban members by $275-to-$319 per month and provide a monthly food allowance of $90 per person, "which was previously only paid in the regions but now also extended to Kabul," the document said.

UNAMA would spend an additional nearly $2 million "for similar services" outside the security budget shared with other UN agencies, the document added.

"The UN system provided allowances to personnel who perform supplementary security services which are critical to the safety of personnel and compounds, as well as operations and movements in the country," said Haq.

Such funds, he said, are paid directly to recipients "and not through the de facto authorities."

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Afghan women will be allowed to work, attend school, leave their homes without male guardians, and wear hijabs (rather than burqas) under the Taliban's renewed regime in Afghanistan, the organization said Sunday as its forces entered the capital, Kabul.

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The statement comes after reports that Taliban insurgents have been forcing women working in banking jobs to leave.

In early July, as Taliban insurgents were seizing territory from government forces across Afghanistan, fighters from the group walked into the offices of Azizi Bank in the southern city of Kandahar and ordered nine women working there to leave.

The gunmen escorted them to their homes and told them not to return to their jobs. Instead, they explained that male relatives could take their place, according to three of the women involved and the bank's manager.

"It's really strange to not be allowed to get to work, but now this is what it is," Noor Khatera, a 43-year-old woman who had worked in the accounts department of the bank told Reuters.

"I taught myself English and even learned how to operate a computer, but now I will have to look for a place where I can just work with more women around."

The incident is an early sign that some of the rights won by Afghan women over the 20 years since the hardline Islamist movement was toppled could be reversed.

The Taliban have steadily overrun the country since US troops began withdrawing in May and the insurgents entered the capital on Sunday.

When they last ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, women could not work, girls were not allowed to attend school and women had to cover their face and be accompanied by a male relative if they wanted to venture out of their homes.

Women who broke the rules sometimes suffered humiliation and public beatings by the Taliban's religious police under the group's strict interpretation of Islamic law.

During hitherto fruitless talks over a political settlement in recent years, Taliban leaders made assurances to the West that women would enjoy equal rights in accordance with what was granted by Islam, including the ability to work and be educated.

Two days after the episode at Azizi Bank, a similar scene played out at a branch of another Afghan lender, Bank Milli, in the western city of Herat, according to two female cashiers who witnessed it.

Three Taliban fighters carrying guns entered the branch, admonishing female employees for showing their faces in public. Women there quit, sending male relatives in their place.

Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid did not respond to a request for comment about the two incidents. Spokespeople for the two banks did not respond to requests for comment.

On the broader question of whether women would be allowed to work in banks in areas it controls, Mujahid added that no decision had yet been made.

"After the establishment of the Islamic system, it will be decided according to the law, and God willing, there will be no problems," he said.

The United States and others Western powers fear that the Taliban will roll back many of the freedoms won by women.

Gains made in women's right have been touted as one of the biggest accomplishments during the 20 years that U.-led forces have been deployed in Afghanistan, although they have mostly been made in urban centers.

Afghan women working in fields including journalism, healthcare and law enforcement have been killed in a wave of attacks since peace talks began last year between the Taliban and the US-backed Afghan government.

The government blames most targeted killings on the Taliban, who deny carrying out assassinations.

"The Taliban will regress freedom at all levels and that is what we are fighting against," an Afghan government spokesperson said.

"Women and children are suffering the most and our forces are trying to save democracy. The world should understand and help us."

Scores of educated Afghan women took to social media to appeal for help and express their frustration.

"With every city collapsing, human bodies collapse, dreams collapse, history and future collapse, art and culture collapse, life and beauty collapse, our world collapses," Rada Akbar wrote on Twitter. "Someone please stop this."

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Two of the main contenders to become Iran's president, hardline judiciary chief Ebrahim Raisi and former parliament speaker Ali Larijani, registered on Saturday to run in next month's election.

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The June 18 election to succeed President Hassan Rouhani is seen as a test of the legitimacy of the country's clerical rulers who are hoping for a high turnout. Rouhani is barred by term limits from running again.

But voter interest may be hit by rising discontent over an economy that has been crippled by US sanctions reimposed after Washington exited a nuclear deal between Iran and major powers three years ago.

Raisi is a 60-year-old mid-ranking cleric in Iran's Shiite Muslim establishment. Appointed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as head of the judiciary in March 2019, he has emerged as one of the country's most powerful figures and a contender to succeed Khamenei.

Larijani, a former nuclear negotiator and an adviser to Khamenei, is hoping to secure backing from both moderates and hardliners and bridge the gap between them.

"I have come as an independent to the stage to make changes in the executive management of the country and to fight poverty, corruption, humiliation and discrimination," Raisi was quoted as saying in a statement by local media before registering.

"I have come to form a strong people's government for a strong Iran" with the help of "the brave youth," Raisi said, apparently alluding to recent comments by Khamenei who said he expected a "capable and energetic government" to come to power.

The judiciary chief lost to Rouhani in the 2017 presidential election.

Reformists and rights activists say they are alarmed by Raisi's background as a hardline judge, especially during the 1980s when he was one of four judges who imposed death penalties on thousands of political prisoners.

Raisi said his government "will not lose one moment to lift the oppressive sanctions."

First Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri, a moderate ally of Rouhani, also registered to run.

Registration of candidates ended on Saturday, after which entrants will be screened for their political and Islamic qualifications by the 12-member Guardian Council vetting body, which has in the past disqualified many moderates and reformers. Six of the members of the hardline body are named by Khamenei.

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More than a dozen civilians, including women and children, have been killed in Egypt's restive northern Sinai Peninsula over the past two weeks from explosive devices laid down in their homes by terrorists, security and medical officials said Sunday.

Islamic State members attacked several villages in the town of Bir al-Abd in July, forcing people to flee their homes. The military then secured the villages in August and allowed residents to return to their homes a few weeks later, the officials said.

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The ISIS members, however, had laid booby traps in several houses that killed at least 14 people, including six from the same family late on Saturday, officials said. The causalities included women and children.

At least 10 others have been wounded since Oct. 12 and were taken to the town's hospital for treatment, they said.

Bir al-Abd was the site of a horrific extremist attack on a mosque in 2017 that killed over 300 worshippers, some of them fathers praying with their young sons. The tribes of North Sinai have been heavily targeted by terrorists who view their veneration of Muslim saints and shrines as heretical, forcing a mass exodus of residents from the impoverished area that has long been underdeveloped by the government.

Violence and instability there intensified after the military overthrew the country's Islamist president in 2013 amid nationwide protests against the Muslim Brotherhood group's divisive rule. Extremists have since carried out scores of attacks, mainly targeting security forces and minority Christians.

The conflict has largely taken place out of public view, with journalists and outside observers barred from the area. The conflict has so far not expanded into the southern end of the peninsula where popular Red Sea tourist resorts are located.

In February 2018, the military launched a massive operation in Sinai that also encompassed parts of the Nile Delta and deserts along the country's western border with Libya. Since then, the pace of Islamic State attacks in Sinai's north has diminished.

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Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin visited a synagogue Sunday ahead of the evening start of Yom Kippur and said more than 7,000 police and soldiers were protecting Jewish services this weekend. France has Europe's largest Jewish community.

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"I came to assure ... members of France's Jewish community of the protection of the state," Darmanin told reporters. "Because we know that Jews are particularly targeted by Islamist attacks and we should obviously protect them."

Darmanin defended authorities' handling of a double stabbing Friday outside the former offices of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, saying intelligence services have prevented 32 potential terrorist attacks over the past three years.

Coordinated Islamic extremist attacks on Charlie Hebdo's Paris newsroom and a kosher supermarket in January 2015 killed 17 people, and Friday's stabbing came as the trial into those attacks is under way.

The suspected assailant in Friday's attack told investigators that he was targeting Charlie Hebdo after it recently republished caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, according to a judicial official. Two people were wounded and several suspects are in custody.

One suspect arrested after Friday's stabbing was later released – and his lawyer says that he had tried to stop the assailant and should be considered a hero instead.

Lawyer Lucie Simon told France-Info that her client, a 33-year-old French resident from Algeria identified only as Youssef, chased the attacker. Simon said the assailant threatened Youssef with a kitchen cleaver, so Youssef fled and told police – who promptly arrested him.

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Chanting "mullahs are terrorists," some two dozen supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) called on German Chancellor Angela Merkel's government "with utmost urgency" to apply pressure on Tehran.

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NCRI spokesman Javad Dabiran told Reuters Television that there was "an alternative" to the current Iranian government, naming his organization and the People's Mujahideen Organization of Iran (PMOI) – also known as the Mujahideen Khalq Organization (MKO) – the main faction within the exiled opposition umbrella organization, the NCRI.

Video: Reuters

On Sunday, protests erupted across Iran for a second day, increasing pressure on the Islamic Republic's leadership after it admitted its military shot down a Ukrainian airliner by accident, despite days of denials that Iranian forces were to blame.

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The scale of the protests, in which nearly 100 people have died since Tuesday, has taken the authorities by surprise. Two years after the defeat of Islamic State, security is better than it has been in years, but corruption is rampant, wrecked infrastructure has not been rebuilt and jobs remain scarce.

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Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi's 17-point plan was the result of an emergency cabinet meeting on Saturday night and comes after days of offering only vague reform promises.

It includes increased subsidized housing for the poor, stipends for the unemployed as well as training programs and small loans initiatives for unemployed youth.

The families of those killed during demonstrations this week will also get payouts and care usually granted to members of the security forces killed during war.

"Amid all of this, I swear to God that my only concern is for the casualties," Abdul Mahdi said during the cabinet meeting, according to state TV.

The streets of the capital were quiet so far on Sunday. Protests have tended to gather steam later in the day.

The clashes shattered a day of relative calm on Saturday after authorities lifted a curfew and traffic moved normally in the center of Baghdad. Hundreds of security personnel were deployed in the streets.

The demonstrations began in Baghdad on Tuesday but have spread quickly spread to other cities mainly in the south.

In the city of Nasiriya, where at least 18 people were killed during the week, police fired live rounds at demonstrators on Saturday. Twenty-four people were wounded in the clashes overnight, including seven policemen, according to security, hospital and morgue sources.

Protesters also torched the headquarters of several political parties in Nasiriya, police said. These included the headquarters of the powerful Dawa party that dominated Iraq's government from 2003 until 2018 elections.

Violence also broke out again in Diwaniya, another city south of Baghdad killing at least one person, police said.

The cabinet's new plan may not be enough to placate protesters and the politicians who've sided with them.

Opposition to the government among parliamentary blocs who have begun boycotting legislative meetings is already brewing, adding pressure on Abdul Mahdi and his cabinet to step down.

Influential Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who has a mass popular following and controls a large chunk of parliament, demanded on Friday that the government resign and snap elections be held. At least one other major parliamentary grouping allied itself with Sadr against the government.

But powerful political parties which have dominated Iraqi politics since the 2003 US-led invasion and toppling of dictator Saddam Hussein have not indicated they are willing to relinquish the institutions they control.

In eastern Baghdad on Friday and Saturday, police snipers shot at demonstrators and several people were wounded, Reuters reporters said.

Security services said the violence killed 8 members of the security forces and wounded more than 1,000, state television reported.

At least 95 demonstrators have died across Iraq, according to a Reuters tally based on police and medical sources. Iraq's semi-official High Commission for Human Rights had put the toll at 99 dead since protests broke out on Tuesday.

The unrest is the deadliest Iraq has seen since the declared defeat of Islamic State in 2017 and has shaken Abdul Mahdi's year-old government. Iraqis fear the violence will continue to escalate.

The violence continued as people began journeying across southern Iraq for the Shiite pilgrimage of Arbaeen, which is expected to attract 20 million worshippers.

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Wednesday's appeal came after a car packed with explosives detonated earlier this week outside Egypt's main cancer hospital in Cairo, killing at least 20 people. It was the deadliest in the Egyptian capital in over two years.

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El-Sissi said in a televised speech that it's "not only the mission of the state to defeat [militants] but also, we as a society have to make our sons understand, enlighten and protect them against this" extremist ideology.

The government has accused a terrorist group known as Hasm, linked to the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, for Sunday's attack, saying it was moving the car in order to carry out an attack elsewhere.

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Pieces of Corinthian columns greet visitors in the backyard. Inside, hundreds of ancient pots and other artifacts hang on the walls or are arranged helter-skelter on shelves.

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They are remnants of five millennia of Gaza's history, from the Bronze Age to the Islamic caliphates and down to the years of Ottoman and British rule in the 20th century.

A sliver of land on the Mediterranean, Gaza was a major trade route between Egypt and the Levant going back to ancient times. But decades of uprisings, war, and political turmoil have inflicted a heavy toll on its rich archaeological heritage, exposing it to looting and destruction.

Hamas seized Gaza in 2007 from forces loyal to the Western-backed Palestinian Authority. In response, Egypt and Israel imposed a blockade on Gaza that has left the territory isolated and increasingly impoverished. The Palestinians say the closures have also hindered excavations and restricted experts' access to new discoveries.

Hamas has done little to protect Gaza's antiquities and in some cases actively destroys them. In 2017, Hamas authorities leveled large parts of Tel Es-Sakan, the remains of a 4,500-year-old Bronze Age city, to make way for construction projects.

Ayman Hassouna, professor of history and archaeology at Gaza's Islamic University, blames Israel, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas equally for not protecting the territory's cultural heritage. He says Israel confiscated artifacts from archaeological digs in the decades it occupied Gaza and did little to prevent antiquities trafficking. Palestinian authorities governing Gaza since 1995 have "attacked many archaeological sites – either intentionally or not," he said.

He also blamed a lack of awareness among Gazans of the importance of preserving antiquities and leaving ancient sites undisturbed.

"When they find something, they would hide it or build over it," he said.

Antiquities plundering and trafficking also remains a problem, said Heyam al-Bitar, an archaeologist with Gaza's Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities. She said the ministry only learned earlier this year that dozens of ancient Greek silver coins were smuggled out of Gaza in 2016.

"It's difficult to track down the trafficking because everything happens in the dark," she said.

Al-Aqqad is one of few trying to save antiquities in Gaza. He began his collection in 1975, buying from collectors or searching the beach and new construction sites. Now his house in the southern city of Khan Younis is an archaeological, heritage and cultural museum, welcoming school trips and history students.

"This museum was established by personal efforts and at the expense of my children's bread... to protect the pieces," al-Aqqad said.

His is one of five legally registered private collections in the Strip, containing 10,000 artifacts and objects of historical value, according to the ministry.

The ministry keeps an inventory of all private collections to prevent artifacts from being sold or smuggled out, said al-Bitar. Owners have received training from the ministry and the Islamic University on how to preserve artifacts and restore clay objects when they fracture, she added.

The underfunded ministry opened a public museum in 2010 at al-Basha Palace, a fort built by Gaza's Mamluk rulers in the mid-13th century. It has 350 to 400 pieces held in sparsely-filled display cases. The museum occasionally showcases pieces from the private collections but does not have space for all of them.

"The ministry has plans to build a large national museum for all these archaeological pieces, but the political-economic situation and the siege on Gaza are preventing this," she said.

Restorers are struggling to save two of Gaza's endangered heritage sites: a 5^th-century Byzantine Church in Jabaliya, discovered in 1996, and a 4^th-century monastery just south of Gaza City. Since the Jabaliya church's discovery, it has suffered from neglect and was damaged in fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants.

Last year, French NGO Première Urgence Internationale launched an ambitious 26-month project to preserve the two sites with a £1,755,000 ($2.1 million) grant by the British Council. As part of the project, protective roofs now cover the ruins and layers of sand protect ornate mosaic floors from further destruction.

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