22 July 2023; MEMO: Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yvan Gil announced on Friday that his country is looking forward to raising the value of trade with Turkiye to $3 billion, Anadolu Agency reported.

During a press conference in Istanbul with his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan, Gil highlighted the significant investment and cooperation policies developed by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Latin America.

WASHINGTON, July 23 (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that while Ukraine has recaptured half the territory that Russia initially seized in its invasion, Kyiv faced "a very hard fight" to win back more.

"It's already taken back about 50% of what was initially seized," Blinken said in an interview with CNN on Sunday.

"These are still relatively early days of the counteroffensive. It is tough," he said, adding: "It will not play out over the next week or two. We're still looking I think at several months."

PRETORIA, July 22 (NNN-TASS) — Russian President Vladimir Putin will participate online in all BRICS leaders’ sessions at the group’s upcoming summit in Johannesburg on August 22-24, Anil Suklal, Ambassador-at-Large for Asia and BRICS at the South African Foreign Ministry and South Africa’s BRICS Sherpa, said.

“He [Russian President Vladimir Putin] will attend the summit virtually.

 He will be involved in all of the sessions with the leaders, [as well as] in the traditional summit of BRICS leaders on the 23th [of August].

HUDSON, N.H. (AP) — They acknowledge Donald Trump’s dominance, but weary Republicans across New Hampshire — even inside the governor’s office — are fighting to stop the former president from winning the first-in-the-nation primary.

For now, however, they’re relying on little more than hope and prayers.

Look no further than Mike Pence, Trump’s former vice president, who repeatedly appealed to voters’ faith this week as he tried to resurrect his anemic presidential campaign while courting a few dozen voters in a former state lawmaker’s backyard.

MOSCOW, July 22 (Xinhua) -- Traffic across the Crimean bridge has been restored after a temporary suspension due to "an unspecified reason" on Saturday morning, said authorities.

Those on the bridge and within the inspection area were requested to remain calm and follow the instructions of transport security staff, according to an official post on Telegram.

Road traffic on the bridge has been restored shortly after the suspension, it updated later.

WASHINGTON, July 21 (Reuters) - The FBI improperly conducted warrantless searches for information about a U.S. senator and two state officials, a U.S. intelligence agency revealed on Friday, as lawmakers are weighing whether to renew the surveillance power that makes such searches possible.

The names of the U.S. senator, the state senator and the state judge targeted were not disclosed.

NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump’s company and his former longtime lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen have settled a lawsuit over Cohen’s claims that he was unfairly stuck with big legal bills after getting entangled in investigations into the former president.

Lawyers for the two sides disclosed the settlement during a video conference with the judge Friday, three days before Cohen’s 2019 lawsuit was slated to go to trial in a Manhattan state court. Details of the agreement were not made public.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Some Florida Keys coral reefs are losing their color weeks earlier than normal this summer because of record-high water temperatures, meaning they are under stress and their health is potentially endangered, federal scientists said.

The corals should be vibrant and colorful this time of year, but are swiftly going white, said Katey Lesneski, research and monitoring coordinator for Mission: Iconic Reefs, which the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration launched to protect Florida coral reefs.

NEW YORK (AP) — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Friday downplayed the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the U.S. Capitol, saying it was not an insurrection but rather a “protest” that “ended up devolving, you know, in a way that was unfortunate, of course.”

DeSantis, speaking in an interview on the podcast of comedian Russell Brand, said the idea that Jan. 6 “was a plan to somehow overthrow the government of the United States is not true, and it’s something that the media had spun up.”

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Alabama on Friday refused to create a second majority-Black congressional district, a move that could defy a recent order from the U.S. Supreme Court to give minority voters a greater voice and trigger a renewed battle over the state’s political map.

WASHINGTON CROSSING, Pa. (AP) — The body of a young girl was recovered Friday in the Delaware River and was believed to be a 2-year-old who was one of two children swept away from their family’s vehicle by a flash flood last weekend, authorities said.

The body was found in the early evening near a Philadelphia wastewater treatment plant about 30 miles (50 kilometers) from where Matilda Sheils was carried away, authorities said in a nighttime news conference.

MOSCOW, July 22. /TASS/: Four Izvestiya and RIA Novosti reporters were injured in a Ukrainian cluster munitions strike at the Zaporozhye Region, the Russian Defense Ministry said Saturday, adding that RIA Novosti reporter Rostislav Zhuravlyov died during evacuation.