Middle East & North Africa

04 July 2022; MEMO: Saudi Arabia's unemployment fell to 10.1 per cent in the first quarter of 2022, down from 11 per cent at the end of last year, the state-run General Authority for Statistics (GASTAT) announced yesterday.

GASTAT said in its report that the kingdom's female unemployment rate had declined to "20.2 per cent, compared to 22.5 per cent at the end of the fourth quarter of 2021," noting that this was the "lowest since 2001."

ANKARA, July 3. /TASS/: A Russian cargo ship allegedly carrying Ukrainian grain has been detained by Turkey’s customs authorities at Kiev’s request, Ukrainian Ambassador to Turkey Vasily Bodnar said on Sunday.

"We have full co-operation [with Turke]. The ship is currently standing at the entrance to the port, it has been detained by the customs authorities of Turkey," Reuters quoted him as saying.

According to Bodnar, investigators will meet on Monday to decide about the ship’s fate.

TEHRAN, Jul 3 (NNN-IRNA) – The Iranian Foreign Ministry, yesterday, condemned the U. S. for its “constant hostility” against Iran, saying, 34 years ago, it was manifested by the downing of a passenger plane, and today, through the continuation of maximum pressure policy.

The ministry made the remarks in a tweet, to commemorate the 34th anniversary of the downing of an Iranian passenger aircraft, by a U.S. Navy guided-missile cruiser in 1988, over the Gulf, which killed 290 people on board.

AMMAN, July 3 (Reuters) - Jordan on Sunday dismissed senior officials at the country's main Red Sea port of Aqaba port after finding gross negligence was behind the deaths of thirteen people following a chlorine gas leak at a major berth.

The deaths and injury of over 300 workers came after a crane loading chlorine containers onto a ship last Monday dropped one onto the quay, causing it to explode. 

CAIRO, July 3 (Reuters) - Two women were killed in shark attacks in Egypt's Red Sea, south of the city of Hurghada, the Egyptian Ministry of Environment said on Sunday.

Two sources told Reuters that the body of a Romanian tourist in her late forties was discovered hours after an attack that left a 68-year-old Austrian woman dead. Both attacks happened within 600 metres of each other, off the coast of Sahl Hasheesh, according to the sources.

DAMASCUS, July 3 (Xinhua) -- Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad on Saturday evening said his country welcomes any role played by Iran in easing the tension between Syria and Turkey and achieving political progress.

The tension has been brewing for weeks after Ankara declared a plan to impose a buffer zone in northern Syria on the border with Turkey through a military operation against the Kurdish militias in that region.

JERUSALEM, July 3 (Xinhua) -- Israel's interim Prime Minister Yair Lapid on Sunday pledged to run a functional government despite another round of political instability that triggered new elections.

In the first cabinet meeting since Lapid took office as interim prime minister on Friday, he sat next to his predecessor Naftali Bennett. The two rotated on Friday under a power-sharing deal they agreed upon in June 2021, after their ideologically diverse eight-party coalition government collapsed only a year after it took office.

RAMALLAH, July 3 (Xinhua) -- A senior Palestinian official said Saturday that the bullet which killed veteran Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in May had been handed to a U.S. team for examination.

The bullet won't be handed to the Israeli authorities and the competent Palestinian authorities have agreed to hand it to the United States, Palestinian Attorney-General Akram Al-Khatib told the official Palestinian news agency WAFA.

02 July 2022; Tehran (ISNA) - Iranian President said that preventing the presence of outsiders in the Caspian Sea is agreed by all its coastal countries and stressed, "Cooperation between countries in the fields of transport and transit, trade, management of marine resources and environment will be reviewed in the Sixth Summit of the Caspian Littoral States".

02 July 2022; Tehran (ISNA) - Reacting to the final communiqué of the G7 summit in Germany, Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Nasser Kanaani said, “We strongly condemn the parts of the final statement of the G7 leaders that are against the Islamic Republic of Iran.”