24 July 2023; MEMO: A Washington Post columnist warned on Sunday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is the "biggest security threat" facing Israel.

DUBAI/GENEVA, July 25 (Reuters) - The United Nations said on Tuesday it had started the removal of more than 1 million barrels of oil from a decaying supertanker off Yemen's Red Sea coast in a complex operation it hopes will ward off a regional disaster.

U.N. officials have been warning for years that the Red Sea and Yemen's coastline was at risk as the Safer tanker could spill four times as much oil as the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster off Alaska.

A U.N. spokesperson said on Tuesday a spill could cost $20 billion to clean up.

25 July 2023; MEMO: Chief of Staff of Israeli Army Herzi Halevi yesterday called for stopping attacks on Israeli troops who protest against the government's planned judicial overhaul, Hebrew media reported.

During a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Halevi said members of the coalition should stop "disparaging" pilots as they have been doing.

24 July 2023; MEMO: The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates yesterday called on all countries to put settler organisations and their members on their terror lists, prosecute them, and prevent them from entering their lands.

24 July 2023; MEMO: The faculty members of four Israeli universities yesterday announced a strike to protest the Israeli government's plan to pass the controversial judicial overhaul plan, Israeli Walla news site reported.

24 July 2023; MEMO: Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who has called for a compromise on judicial reform legislation, said today that the country "is in a state of national emergency."

"We are working around the clock, in every possible way, to find a solution. The infrastructure for a possible understanding exists, yet gaps remain that require the various parties to show responsibility," the president said.

EAGLE PASS, Texas (AP) — Wrecking ball-sized buoys on the Rio Grande. Razor wire strung across private property without permission. Bulldozers changing the very terrain of America’s southern border.

For more than two years, Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has escalated measures to keep migrants from entering the U.S., pushing legal boundaries with a go-it-alone bravado along the state’s 1,200-mile (1,930-kilometer) border with Mexico. Now blowback over the tactics is widening, including from within Texas.

July 25 (Reuters) - Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is running for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, was involved in a car accident in Tennessee on Tuesday but is uninjured, his spokesperson said.

"This morning, the governor was in a car accident while traveling to an event in Chattanooga, Tennessee," the spokesperson, Bryan Griffin, said in a statement. "He and his team are uninjured."

The campaign did not release additional information.

DeSantis, 44, is considered former President Donald Trump's main challenger in the 2024 Republican contest.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Internal Revenue Service said Monday it is ending its decades-old policy of making unannounced home and business visits, in an effort to help keep its workers safe and to combat scammers who pose as IRS agents.

Effective immediately, revenue agents will no longer make unplanned visits to taxpayers’ homes and businesses “except in a few unique circumstances,” the Treasury Department said in a statement. The agency will instead mail letters to people to schedule meetings.

BEIJING, July 25 (Reuters) - China named veteran diplomat Wang Yi as its new foreign minister on Tuesday, removing former rising star Qin Gang after a mysterious one-month absence from duties barely half a year into the job.

Qin, 57, a former aide to President Xi Jinping and envoy to the US, took over the ministry in December but has not been seen in public since June 25 when he met visiting diplomats in Beijing.

HOUSTON, July 24 (Xinhua) -- The Joe Biden administration on Monday filed a lawsuit against the state of Texas over deploying water barriers in the Rio Grande aimed to block migrants from crossing into the United States from Mexico.

In the lawsuit, the Department of Justice is asking the U.S. District Court in the Western District of Texas to force the state to remove the existing marine barriers and stop building more in the border river.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden’s administration on Tuesday is announcing new rules meant to push insurance companies to increase their coverage of mental health treatments.