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25 July 2022; MEMO: In a Monday phone call, Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar and US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin discussed last week's deal to reopen Ukrainian ports for grain exports, says Anadolu Agency.

The call came after Turkiye, the UN, Russia, and Ukraine signed a deal on Friday to reopen three Ukrainian ports – Odesa, Chernomorsk, and Yuzhny – for grain exports stuck for months due to the Russia-Ukraine war, now in its sixth month.

Saudi Arabia is set to build a 75-mile-long skyscraper across the desert as part of its planned NEOM megacity. According to the Wall Street Journal, the "Mirror Line" will have mirrored or reflective walls, and will end in the Red Sea.

Costing a staggering $1 trillion (£833 billion), the 1,600 feet high desert skyscraper will have two parallel structures and associated buildings which together will house five million people. It will have facilities for vertical farming, a yacht marina and a sports stadium, as well as a high speed railway running underneath.

New Delhi, Jul 24 (PTI) Reliance Industries Ltd expects prices of natural gas in India to rise again in October but wants government-dictated caps to go, in a bid to align domestic rates with global energy prices.

The conglomerate, controlled by billionaire Mukesh Ambani, expects the price cap for its KG-D6 gas sales to rise over the current USD 9.92 per million British thermal units, Sanjay Roy, senior vice-president for exploration and production, said in an investor call following the announcement of the firm's quarterly earnings on Friday.

24 July 2022; MEMO: Ukraine pressed ahead on Sunday with efforts to restart grain exports from its Black Sea ports under a deal aimed at easing global food shortages but warned deliveries would suffer if Russia's strike on Odesa was a sign of more to come, Reuters reports.

President Volodymyr Zelensky denounced Saturday's attack as "barbarism" that showed Moscow could not be trusted to implement a deal struck just one day earlier with Turkish and United Nations mediation.

23 July 2022; MEMO: Iran announced on Friday its refusal to choose between reviving the nuclear agreement or establishing relations with Russia, stressing that this bilateral relationship is "false".

23 July 2022; MEMO: The UK government on Friday hailed a landmark grain deal signed by Russia, Ukraine, the United Nations (UN) and Türkiye to resume grain exports through the Black Sea, Anadolu Agency reported.

"[Russian President Vladimir] Putin's barbaric invasion of Ukraine has meant some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in the world are at risk of having nothing to eat," UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said in a statement.

23 July 2022; MEMO: Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, will begin an African tour in Egypt on Sunday, seeking to draw on demand for non-Western alliances as Moscow pushes back against international censure over the war in Ukraine, Reuters reports.

In Egypt, Lavrov will meet officials trying to square deep links to Russia with their close relationship to the United States which, along with other Western powers, sought to isolate Russia with tough sanctions after its 24 February invasion of Ukraine.

22 July 2022; MEMO: Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, will visit Greece on 26 July to meet Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the Greek Foreign Ministry said on Friday, in his first visit to an EU country since the 2018 killing of Saudi journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, Reuters reports.

The Ministry said the pair was due to sign bilateral deals, without giving details. A Greek diplomatic source said the deals were in the fields of energy, military cooperation and an undersea data cable, among others.

23 July 2022; MEMO: Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian has announced that Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) intend to raise their diplomatic representation in Tehran to the level of ambassador, adding: "We were informed of Saudi Arabia's agreement to raise the dialogue from the security to the political level."

21 July 2022; MEMO: Russian President, Vladimir Putin, and Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, spoke by phone on Thursday and underlined the importance of further cooperation within the OPEC+ group of oil producers, the Kremlin said, Reuters reports.

The conversation took place six days after US President, Joe Biden, visited the Prince in Saudi Arabia – highlighting the Kingdom's importance to both Washington and Moscow at a time when Russia's war in Ukraine is roiling global energy markets.