31 May 2023; MEMO: The United Arab Emirates withdrew from a US-led Middle East maritime security coalition two months ago, the Gulf state said early on Wednesday, Reuters reports.

01 June 2023; MEMO: International reports revealed that the European Union (EU) would use former German Chancellor Angela Merkel as a mediator between it and Turkiye to facilitate the transfer of natural gas discovered on the Greek Cypriot side, taking advantage of her good relations with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

31 May 2023; MEMO: The Israeli consulate in Los Angeles was forced to scrap a public event with the country's Science and Technology Minister Ofir Akunis following a protest by American Jews over the planned judicial overhaul by the far-right government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

LACONIA, N.H. (AP) — Former President Donald Trump returns to the campaign trail Thursday as his chief rival for the GOP presidential nomination, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, is undertaking his first swing through early voting states as an official candidate.

Trump is back in Iowa nearly three weeks after canceling his last event, a large rally near Des Moines, due to a tornado warning, reluctantly ceding the spotlight to DeSantis as the governor crisscrossed the state ahead of his campaign launch.

WASHINGTON, June 1 (Reuters) - The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits increased modestly last week and private employers hired more workers than expected in May, pointing to continued labor market tightness that could push the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates elevated.

BULBOACA, Moldova (AP) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived at a sprawling summit of some 50 European leaders in Moldova on Thursday, becoming the focal point of an event that seeks to quell regional conflicts and shore up unity in the face of Russia’s war.

OSLO, June 1 (Reuters) - Moscow cannot stop Ukraine from becoming a NATO member, the alliance's chief Jens Stoltenberg said on Thursday, as divisions among allies about the speed of Kyiv's accession became apparent only weeks before a decisive mid-July summit in Vilnius.

"All allies agree that Moscow does not have a veto against NATO enlargement," Stoltenberg told reporters as NATO foreign ministers gathered in Oslo, seeking to dispel any signs of discord ahead of the summit.

"We are moving, allies agree that Ukraine will become a member."

01 June 2023; MEMO: The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Wednesday announced the closure of the investigation into the "suspected" nuclear facility in Iran, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke about in a speech delivered in September 2019.

MOSCOW, June 1. /TASS/: Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, has described the Ukrainian regime’s actions as terrorism, pointing out that the only way to counteract terrorists is to destroy them.

CAPE TOWN, June 1 (Reuters) - BRICS foreign ministers on Thursday asserted their bloc's ambition to rival Western powers but their talks in South Africa were overshadowed by questions over whether Russia's president would be arrested if he attended a summit in August.

South Africa's Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor said her country was mulling options if Vladimir Putin, the subject of a war crimes arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC), came to the planned BRICS summit in Johannesburg.

WASHINGTON, June 1 (Reuters) - Far-right Oath Keepers militant group member Roberto Minuta was sentenced to four and a half years in prison on Thursday after he was convicted of seditious conspiracy and other crimes arising from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by then-President Donald Trump's supporters.

"You can feel a way about a government and about the way it's treating its citizens without resorting to violence," U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta said. "That is why you find yourself where you are today."

SEOUL, June 1 (Reuters) - North Korea's latest space launcher appears to be a new design and most likely uses engines developed for the nuclear-armed country's intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM), analysts said on Thursday.

The rocket, dubbed the Chollima-1, failed during its first launch attempt on Wednesday. It lifted off successfully but its second stage failed to start as expected, state media reported, and it crashed into the Yellow Sea.