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12 October 2022; MEMO: UAE President Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan met yesterday with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin and discussed bilateral relations and the latest regional and international developments.

Sheikh Mohammed, who is on an official visit to Russia, hailed the bilateral cooperation with Russia, saying trade volume between the two countries doubled from $2.5 to $5 billion during the COVID-19 pandemic, while half a million Russian tourists have visited the UAE.

11 October 2022; MEMO: Flight bookings to Qatar are booming for the soccer World Cup being held in November and December, with particularly strong demand from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), as fans work round a shortage of accommodation in Doha, a study showed on Tuesday, Reuters reports.

Flight bookings to Qatar from the UAE and nine other countries have risen ten-fold compared with before the pandemic, travel analysis group, ForwardKeys, said.

11 October 2022; MEMO: Turkiye and Greece inaugurated a "friendship line" ferry link between the seaside town of Izmir in western Turkiye and the northern Greek port city of Thessaloniki, Turkish media reports.

According to the report, Greek-based shipping company, Levante Ferries, announced "Smyrna di Levante" vessel started ferrying passengers this week.

The Thessaloniki-Izmir ferry line marks the first direct maritime link between mainland Greece and Turkiye, the report says.

11 October 2022; MEMO: Lebanon and Israel have reached a historic agreement demarcating a disputed maritime border between them, following years of US-mediated negotiations, Israeli Prime Minister, Yair Lapid, said on Tuesday, Reuters reports.

While limited in scope, a deal would mark a significant compromise between States with a history of war and hostility, opening the way for offshore energy exploration and easing a source of recent tensions.

12 October 2022; MEMO: The head of Iran's Civil Aviation Organisation (CAO) Mohammad Mohammadi-Bakhshd said yesterday that the first Iranian-made passenger plane will enter service within the next three years, the Iranian news agency IRNA reported.

The official's remarks came more than a month after President Ebrahim Raisi announced plans to build the first Iranian passenger plane.

10 October 2022; MEMO: United Arab Emirates President, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, will travel to Russia on Tuesday to meet with President Vladimir Putin, UAE state news agency, WAM, reported on Monday, Reuters reports.

The announcement came less than a week after OPEC+, a group of oil producers that includes the UAE and Russia, agreed steep oil production cuts in defiance of US pressure.

10 October 2022; MEMO: The Syrian regime of Bashar Al-Assad has signed new agreements to purchase and import wheat from its ally, Russia, as Syria's domestic wheat yield and supplies continue to be insufficient this year.

11 October 2022; MEMO: Turkiye's unemployment rate fell to 9.6 per cent in August, according to data released by TurkStat, Anadolu News Agency reports.

According to the report, Turkiye's unemployment rate dropped the lowest since March 2014.

The number of unemployed people aged 15 and over dropped by 100,000 month-on-month to 3.3 million as of August, report says.

In 2022, inflation in Turkiye has climbed above 83 per cent – a 24-year-high.

11 October 2022; MEMO: The annual consumer price inflation rate in Egyptian cities reached 15 per cent in September, its highest level in nearly four years, the state-run Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS) reported yesterday.

This is the highest annual rate of consumer price inflation in Egypt's cities since November 2018, when it recorded a rise to 15.7 per cent.

11 October 2022; MEMO: The Turkish Ambassador to Iraq yesterday met with the President of Iraq's Kurdish Regional Government, Nechirvan Barzani, and discussed Ankara's relations with the Kurdistan region as well as the political situation in Iraq.

Ambassador Ali Riza Guney wrote in a tweet on Twitter that he discussed domestic and foreign political issues with Barzani.