MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Republican state lawmakers on Tuesday suspended a vote on funding for University of Wisconsin campuses, just hours after a top GOP leader promised to slash the college system’s budget as part of an ongoing fight over diversity and inclusion initiatives.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, the state’s top Republican, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that he expected the GOP-controlled Legislature’s budget-writing committee to cut all funding that the university system would use for diversity initiatives. He estimated the cuts would total $32 million.

14 June 2023; MEMO: No Israeli delegation participated in the 33rd Congress of the International Confederation of Midwives being held in the Indonesian island of Bali after they were told the Israeli flag would not be raised at the conference, Israeli media reported.

13 June 2023; MEMO: Iran and Venezuela want to increase bilateral trade to $20 billion, up from $3 billion, Iranian President, Ebrahim Raisi, said on Monday during a visit to Caracas.

During the visit, the two countries signed a Memorandum of Understanding to expand cooperation in petrochemicals with a view to carrying out joint projects, building on their already-close cooperation in oil, Reuters reports.

BERLIN (AP) — The German government said Russia is the greatest security threat “for the foreseeable future” and advocated a balanced approach to China as it unveiled its first comprehensive national security strategy Wednesday.

The strategy was part of an effort to address what Germany views as growing military, economic and social risks to the country. Germany’s biggest opposition party criticized the government’s position as “anemic.”

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that NATO should not bet on his country approving Sweden’s application to join the Western military alliance before a July summit because the Nordic nation has not fully addressed his security concerns.

Sweden and Finland applied for membership together following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year. Finland became NATO’s 31st member in April after the Turkish parliament ratified its request, but Turkey has held off approving Sweden’s bid.

14 June 2023; MEMO: A member of the Moroccan parliament has questioned what measures the government has put in place to protect the kingdom from being a site to dump foreign rubbish.

This comes after media outlets published details of an investigation carried out by the Spanish authorities into the smuggling of tonnes of plastic waste into Morocco and other countries in Africa.

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — A fishing boat carrying migrants capsized and sank off the coast of Greece on Wednesday, authorities said, leaving at least 78 people dead and many dozens feared missing in one of the worst disasters of its kind this year.

Coast guard, navy and merchant vessels fanned out for a vast search-and-rescue operation that also included a plane and a helicopter.

BRUSSELS, June 14. /TASS/: The European Union’s envoys have postponed the approval of the 11th package of sanctions against Russia until June 19, a European diplomatic source told TASS on Wednesday.

"The envoys managed to move forward in discussing the 11th package of sanctions, with several elements to be revised still remaining. The next discussion is to be held at the meeting of the Committee of Permanent Representatives in the European Union next week," the diplomat said.

BERLIN (AP) — A German opposition party on Wednesday launched a legal challenge against an electoral reform designed to reduce the size of the country’s increasingly bloated parliament.

The Barvarian center-right Christian Social Union is one of two opposition parties that have been vehemently critical of the legislation, which lawmakers approved in March, and see their future place in parliament at risk. They accuse Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s three-party coalition of cobbling together constitutionally dubious rules to favor itself.

June 14 (Reuters) - Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has said his country has started taking delivery of Russian tactical nuclear weapons, some of which he said were three times more powerful than the atomic bombs the US dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

The deployment is Moscow's first move of such warheads - shorter-range less powerful nuclear weapons that could potentially be used on the battlefield - outside Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Kuwait reached an agreement worth $367 million with Turkish drone giant Baykar to purchase its increasingly sought-after TB2 combat drones, the Kuwaiti army said.

The drone, Bayraktar TB2, boasts unmanned aerial vehicles that can carry lightweight, laser-guided bombs, and fly for up to 27 hours at a time, which, according to the company, was “a record,” it had set while testing the drone in Kuwait in 2019.

The announcement, on Tuesday, would set Kuwait to become the 28th country to procure the TB2 drones.

WASHINGTON/NEW DELHI, June 13 (Reuters) - Ahead of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's state visit to Washington, the Biden administration is pushing New Delhi to cut through its own red tape and advance a deal for dozens of U.S.-made armed drones, two people familiar with the matter said.

India has long expressed interest in buying large armed drones from the United States. But bureaucratic stumbling blocks have hampered a hoped-for deal for SeaGuardian drones that could be worth $2 billion to $3 billion for years.