Middle East & North Africa

JERUSALEM, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid and his Greek counterpart Kyriakos Mitsotakis agreed to further enhance the two countries' energy cooperation during a phone talk Wednesday.

"The two leaders discussed the need to continue deepening cooperation between Greece and Israel, including in the field of energy," Lapid's office said in a statement, adding that they "agreed to stay in regular and close contact."

JERUSALEM (AP) — President Joe Biden’s dash through Israel and the occupied West Bank this week is expected to cut across some of the region’s most iconic places.

Both luxurious and grueling, Biden’s visit starts with a VIP arrival at Israel’s main commercial airport — an on-and-off nightmare for regular travelers this summer due to huge lines and delays — and pings through Jerusalem and the West Bank.

ISTANBUL (AP) — Military officials from Russia and Ukraine were set to hold their governments’ first face-to-face talks in months Wednesday during a session in Istanbul devoted to a United Nations plan to export blocked Ukrainian grain to world markets through the Black Sea.

Turkish military officials and U.N. representatives also planned to participate in the discussion focused on finding a way to get millions of tons of grain sitting in silos amid the war in Ukraine shipped out of the country’s ports toward the Mediterranean.

13 July 2022; MEMO: Libya's Tripoli-based Government of National Unity (GNU) moved to replace the National Oil Corp (NOC) chairman and board yesterday, Reuters reports.

According to the text of the decision confirmed to Reuters by a GNU official, Prime Minister Abdulhamid Dbeibah will replace veteran NOC chairman Mustafa Sanalla with Farhat Bengdara, the central bank governor before Libya's 2011 revolution.

13 July 2022; MEMO: Tunisia's I Watch organisation announced that it had filed a lawsuit against President Kais Saied and the President of the Independent High Authority for Elections, Farouk Bouaskar, on charges of violating the electoral law and committing administrative corruption.

The organisation said in a statement that Saied's participation in the referendum campaign without submitting a request to do so is a violation that requires legal accountability.

13 July 2022; MEMO: Commenting on the revelation that Israel burnt alive Egyptian soldiers in 1967, the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas said yesterday that "this crime discloses the extent of Israel's terrorism."

In a statement, Hamas spokesman Hazem Qasem said: "The disclosure of the Israeli crime of burning tens of Egyptian soldiers alive during the 1967 aggression discloses the extent of Israel's terrorism and sadism which dominate Israel's behaviour in all of its wars."

13 July 2022; MEMO: Iran yesterday accused US President Joe Biden of adopting a policy that contradicts his declared desire to revive the 2015 nuclear agreement.

This came following an opinion piece written by Biden for the Washington Post and published on Saturday ahead of his visit to the Middle East this week.

13 July 2022; MEMO: Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri said yesterday that Beirut will defend its marine resources just like it had defended its land from the Israeli occupation.

13 July 2022; MEMO: Iraq's former Transportation Minister, Amir Abdul-Jabbar, said yesterday that Saudi Arabia is planning to announce the formation of a regional Arab military alliance similar to NATO that includes Iraq, during the upcoming visit of US President Joe Biden to Riyadh this week.

13 July 2022; MEMO: The UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said he was "shocked by the killing and injuring of Palestinian children by Israeli forces in airstrikes on densely populated areas, through the use of live ammunition and at the continued lack of accountability for these violations."