13 July 2023; MEMO: Israel's National Unity Party leader Benny Gantz attacked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday, accusing him of being a politician with no restrictions, Akka news website has reported. Gantz apparently said that Netanyahu is seeking to partition the nation for the sake of staying in office.

TAIPEI, July 13 (Reuters) - Chinese fighter jets monitored a U.S. Navy patrol plane that flew through the sensitive Taiwan Strait on Thursday, as China carried out a third day of military exercises to the south of the island Beijing views as China's sovereign territory.

12 July 2023; MEMO: German authorities have handed over to Egypt more than 40 artefacts that were smuggled out of the country and discovered at Frankfurt airport, reports the Egypt Independent.

The artefacts came from Thailand and were on their way to the UK when they were seized, according to Khaled Galal, the Egyptian ambassador to Berlin.

Galal told the Egypt Independent that this is the fifth time Egyptian artefacts have been smuggled into Germany.

12 July 2023; MEMO: Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi arrived in Nairobi today as the part of the first leg of his three-nation tour of Africa, which will cover Uganda and Zimbabwe as well as Kenya. The tour follows last month's three-nation Latin America trip by Raisi, and will be the first time that an Iranian president has visited Africa in 11 years.

BERLIN (AP) — The head of this year’s United Nations climate talks called Thursday for governments and businesses to tackle global warming by reducing greenhouse gas emissions in all regions and sectors if they want to stop the planet from passing a key temperature limit agreed on more than seven years ago.

13 July 2023; MEMO: UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, sent a letter to Russian President, Vladimir Putin, in an effort to renew the Black Sea grain deal as the deadline is nearing, said a spokesperson on Wednesday, Anadolu Agency reports.

HELSINKI, July 13 (Reuters) - President Joe Biden on Thursday gave his assurance that the United States would stay committed to NATO despite "extreme elements" of the Republican Party, in remarks during a visit to Finland to welcome it as the alliance's latest member.

"I absolutely guarantee it," Biden told a press conference when pressed by a Finnish reporter about the U.S. commitment to NATO given political instability in the United States. Biden's predecessor, Republican former President Donald Trump, threatened to take the United States out of the alliance.

VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP) — President Joe Biden pledged Wednesday that western allies “will not waver” in defense of Ukraine, casting the struggle against Russian aggression as one of the world’s central challenges requiring a broad coalition of countries to stand in defense of freedom.

“Our unity will not falter,” Biden declared. “I promise you.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — Wholesale prices in the United States decelerated again last month, the latest sign that inflationary pressures are easing in the face of the Federal Reserve’s streak of interest rate hikes.

The government’s producer price index — which measures inflation before it reaches consumers — rose just 0.1% last month from June 2022, the smallest such increase since August 2020. And from May to June, prices rose an identical 0.1% after having fallen 0.4% from April to May.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Kamala Harris, who made history as the first woman or person of color to serve as vice president, has made history again by matching the record for most tiebreaking votes in the Senate.

Her 31st such vote, on Wednesday, advanced the nomination of Kalpana Kotagal to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The only other vice president to cast so many was John C. Calhoun, vice president from 1825 to 1832.

“It is a moment and I think that there’s still so much left that we have yet to do,” Harris told reporters afterward.

LONDON (AP) — Google said Thursday that it’s rolling out its AI-powered chatbot Bard across Europe and in Brazil, expanding its availability to hundreds of millions more users.

The company also said it’s adding more features to Bard as it scrambles to keep up with rival Microsoft — which uses OpenAI’s popular ChatGPT service in its Bing search engine — in the race to capitalize on generative artificial intelligence technology that has captured worldwide attention.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — After a historically wet winter and a cloudy spring, California’s summer was in full swing Thursday as a heat wave that’s been scorching much of the U.S. Southwest brings triple digit temperatures and an increased risk of wildfires.

Blistering conditions will build Friday and throughout the weekend in the central and southern parts of California, where many residents should prepare for the hottest weather of the year, the National Weather Service warned.