WASHINGTON, 24 June 2022, (TON): The United States will send another $450 million in military aid to Ukraine, including some additional medium-range rocket systems, to help push back Russian progress in the war, officials announced.

The latest package includes four High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, which will double the number they have now.

All four were prepositioned in Europe, and training on those systems has already begun with the Ukrainian troops who will use them, said Marine Corps Lt. Col. Anton Semelroth, a Pentagon spokesman. The first four HIMARS that the US previously sent have already gone to the battlefield in Ukraine and are in the hands of troops there.

According to the Pentagon “the aid also includes 18 tactical vehicles that are used to tow howitzers, so the weapons can be moved around the battlefield, as well as 18 coastal and riverine patrol boats, thousands of machine guns, grenade launchers and rounds of ammunition, and some other equipment and spare parts.”

The new aid comes just a week after the US announced it was sending $1 billion in military aid to Ukraine, and as the Russian military continues to slowly expand its control in the eastern Donbas region.

ANKARA, 24 June 2022, (TON): Firefighting crews battle for a third day a wind-driven wildfire that has blackened swaths of pine forest near a popular resort in southwestern Turkey and driven dozens of people from their homes.

More than 2,500 firefighters, aided by water-dropping planes and helicopters, were deployed to fight the blaze that erupted on Tuesday in the Bordubet region, near Marmaris on the Aegean Sea coast.

The blaze spread rapidly, fanned by winds.

According to the office of the mayor for the Mugla region “fires were raging in three locations around Bordubet, but had been brought under control at a fourth location.”

The municipality said “Authorities have evacuated close to 275 people from the area as a precaution.”

WASHINGTON, 24 June 2022, (TON): Leader of the free world sounds like a superhero character, but the Joe Biden heading this week to twin European summits is in reality a politically fragile president tasked, somehow, with resolving an unenviable string of diplomatic problems.

Biden arrives in Germany for the G7 summit of major Western powers, followed next week by the NATO military alliance summit in Madrid.

Both sessions will take place in the shadow of Russia’s Ukraine invasion, but also a global surge in inflation, fears of recession, and the ever-growing challenge of containing China while avoiding open conflict.

According to a senior US official “for sure, Biden will tout the success of a monumental effort to rally the West and breathe new life into NATO a high water mark in transatlantic solidarity in the post-Cold War period.”

ANKARA, 24 June 2022, (TON): Turkey and Israel have begun work on restoring their mutual diplomatic representation to ambassador level, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said as the two countries seek an end to more than a decade of strained ties.

The two countries expelled ambassadors in 2018 and have often traded barbs over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Energy has emerged as a key area for potential cooperation as they strive to mend their relations.

Cavusoglu said at a news conference “we will continue the high-level mutual visits in the short term.”

Lapid was visiting Ankara after months of warming ties but amid worries voiced by Israel that its citizens could come under attack by Iranian agents in Turkey, a NATO member state.

WASHINGTON: The White House said “the NATO alliance’s new strategic concept reflects concerns about China, including its economic practices.”

John Kirby, US National Security Council coordinator said “less than a year ago, the defense ministers for the first time in NATO put mention of China in the communique.”

“So it’s building on what has been once discussions and deliberations with the allies about the threat that China poses to international security, well beyond just the Indo-Pacific region.”

President Joe Biden leaves to meet with other G7 leaders in southern Germany before heading to Madrid for a summit.

TRIPOLI, 24 June 2022, (TON): The United Nations said “it will broker new talks between rival institutions from war-torn Libya next week to try to break a deadlock on the rules for long-awaited elections.”

Parliament speaker Aguila Saleh and President of the High Council of State Khaled Al-Mishri have accepted my invitation to meet at the UN Office at Geneva 28-29 June to discuss the draft constitutional framework for elections, the UNs top Libya official Stephanie Williams tweeted.

I commend the heads of the two chambers for committing to seek consensus on the remaining issues after last weeks Joint Committee meeting in Cairo.

Presidential and parliamentary elections, originally set for December last year, were meant to cap a UN-led peace process following the end of the last major round of violence in 2020.

TUNIS, 24 June 2022, (TON): The head of Tunisias powerful UGTT trade union confederation rejected conditions set by the International Monetary Fund for a new loan to bail out the countrys struggling economy.

Noureddine Taboubi told reporters “we reject the conditions set by the IMF, given Tunisians low salaries, lack of means, rising poverty and unemployment.”

The global lender has called for ambitious reforms to tackle the heavily indebted countrys public finances and reform its state-owned companies.

The IMFs regional chief Jihad Azour said Wednesday that the fund was set to begin formal talks on a new financial aid package in the coming weeks, saying the economic fallout from the Ukraine war made it ever more pressing.

BRUSSELS, 24 June 2022, (TON): European Union leaders on Thursday agreed to grant candidate status to Ukraine and Moldova, in a show of support in the face of Russias war.

A historic moment. Today marks a crucial step on your path toward the EU, Michel wrote on Twitter during a summit in Brussels.

Our future is together.

Ukraine applied to become an EU candidate in a bid to cement its place in Europe just days after Moscow launched its devastating invasion.

Frances President Emmanuel Macron said the move sent a very strong signal to the Kremlin that the EU backs the pro-Western aspirations of Ukraine.

He said “we owe it to the Ukrainian people who are fighting to defend our values, their sovereignty, their territorial integrity.”

STOCKHOLM, 24 June 2022, (TON): Swedens foreign ministry has advised its citizens against traveling to Iran ahead of the conclusion of a trial that has soured relations between the two countries.

The ministry said in a statement “due to the security situation, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs advises against all travel to Iran.”

Relations between the two countries soured after Sweden put on trial a former Iranian official on charges of war crimes for the mass execution and torture of political prisoners at an Iranian prison in the 1980s.

The verdict is due on July 14.

In turn, Sweden has strongly condemned the death sentence of Ahmadreza Djalali, a Swedish-Iranian disaster medicine researcher that Iran has accused of spying for Israel.

RIYADH, 24 June 2022, (TON): The Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed “Saudi Arabia's condemnation of the recent extremist attacks that took place in the Mopti region of Mali.”

The Malian government said fighters from the Fulani religious leader Amadou Koufa's armed group, the Macina Katiba, killed 132 civilians in Diallassagou and two surrounding villages, a few dozen kilometers from Bankass.

The mass killing the latest in a series of attacks across the Sahel resulted in one of Mali's highest civilian death tolls.

Villagers were contining a search for the missing this week, raising fears of an even greater toll. Mali has seen an increase in extremist insurgency linked to Al-Qaeda following two military coups in the last two years.