MOSCOW, July 25. /TASS/: Russian Federation Council Speaker Valentina Matviyenko has called the Ukrainian shelling of Russian reporters a despicable murder and atrocity.

24 July 2023; MEMO: If Israel's Mossad intelligence agency is behind the burning of the Quran, then there needs to be "strong popular and official positions" to stand against it, the Secretary-General of the Lebanese Hezbollah group, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, has said.

BEIRUT, July 24 (Xinhua) -- Parts of the damaged Beirut Railway Station in the Mar Mikhael neighborhood of the Lebanese capital will soon be restored with foreign funding, according to a UNESCO-Italian deal reached Monday on recovery of the industrial heritage site.

Under the deal, the Italian government will finance 2 million euros (about 2.21 million U.S. dollars) through the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation, a public agency, for the recovery work, according to a statement released by UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

KUALA LUMPUR, July 25 (NNN-Bernama) — The ringgit opened lower against the US dollar Tuesday ahead of Wednesday’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) interest rate announcement. 

As the US Federal Reserve is widely expected to raise interest rates by another 25 basis points, investors are looking forward to the accompanying statement to gauge the future outlook for rates.

At 9 am, the local note fell to 4.5705/5740 against the greenback compared with 4.5640/5690 at Monday’s close.

24 July 2023; MEMO: The Moroccan Unification and Reform movement, the advocacy wing of the opposition Justice and Development Party, renewed yesterday its rejection of normalisation with Israel. "This is a path that might turn Morocco into an arena for regional and international conflicts and Israeli infiltration, in a manner threatening security and stability in the region," it explained.

PARIS (AP) — U.S. first lady Jill Biden visited Paris on Tuesday to attend a flag-raising ceremony at UNESCO, marking Washington’s official reentry into the U.N. agency after a five-year hiatus.

Before the Stars and Stripes is hoisted up outside UNESCO’s headquarters, Biden will make remarks about the importance of American leadership in preserving cultural heritage and empowering education and science across the globe.

RHODES, Greece, July 25 (Reuters) - A plane fighting wildfires in Greece crashed on Tuesday and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis warned of tough days ahead with blazes destroying homes and forcing the evacuation of thousands of tourists from the island of Rhodes.

State broadcaster ERT showed footage of the plane dropping water over a fire and then crashing into a hillside and bursting into flames.

The Greek air force said there were two airmen aboard the amphibious Canadair CL-215 plane when it crashed over the island of Evia, east of Athens.

MILAN, July 25 (Reuters) - Two women were killed and a 16-year-old boy seriously injured as severe storms battered northern Italy overnight, while a wild fire in Sicily forced the temporary closure of Palermo airport.

With much of southern Italy still baking in a heatwave, the overnight storm in Milan tore off roofs and uprooted hundreds of trees, blocking roads, smashing parked cars and disrupting overground transportation in the Italian financial capital.

ISLAMABAD, July 25 (APP): Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari on Tuesday congratulated Wang Yi on his appointment as China’s Foreign Minister.

On his Twitter handle, the foreign minister praised Wang Yi as ‘an astute and seasoned diplomat’ with whom he had the distinct pleasure of interacting twice last year.

“I’m confident that under his watch our all-weather strategic cooperative partnership would grow from strength to strength,” he further added.

ISLAMABAD, July 24 (Xinhua) -- The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) has emerged as a corridor of opportunity, traversing vast terrains to connect the warm waters of the Arabian Sea with the rich landscapes of China's western regions, a government official said Monday.

MOSCOW, July 25. /TASS/: Russia's GDP growth rate has accelerated from month to month this year, and there is every reason to assume that growth will fully offset last year's decline in 2023, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday

"For the entire 2022, GDP decreased by 2.1% and in January-May of 2023 it grew by 0.6$, and from month to month the pace accelerated: in May - up to 5.4%," he said.

"We expect GDP to grow by more than 2% by the end of the year," Putin said, adding that "this growth will completely offset last year's decline."

AMMAN, Jul 24 (NNN-PETRA) – Jordan and Syria, yesterday, held a meeting in Amman, to discuss cooperation, to prevent drug smuggling across the Syrian borders into Jordan.

The meeting, also the inaugural meeting of the Jordanian-Syrian Joint Committee for Combating Drug Smuggling, focused on the pressing threats posed by drug trafficking to the entire region.

Jordan and Syria agreed to form the joint committee, during the visit of Jordanian Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Ayman Safadi to Syria, on Jul 3.