Middle East & North Africa

SUEZ, Egypt (AP) — Salvage teams on Monday finally freed the colossal container ship stuck for nearly a week in the Suez Canal, ending a crisis that had clogged one of the world’s most vital waterways and halted billions of dollars a day in maritime commerce.

A flotilla of tugboats, helped by the tides, wrenched the bulbous bow of the skyscraper-sized Ever Given from the canal’s sandy bank, where it had been firmly lodged since March 23.

NICOSIA, March 29. /TASS/: The Ministry of Health of Cyprus formally transferred Russia into the group of countries, whose tourists can visit the country, from April 1, according to the updated register of countries ranked by epidemiological situation.

SOUSSE (Tunisia), March 29 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Dozens of Tunisian activists protested in the port city of Sousse to demand the return of nearly 300 containers of household waste illegally imported from Italy.

Tunisian customs officials last summer seized 282 containers that had been shipped from Italy in the guise of plastic scrap for industrial recycling.

But the containers were found to contain household waste, which is barred from import under Tunisian law.

CAIRO, Mar 29 (NNN-MENA) – Ethiopia’s unilateral actions over the filling and operation of the controversial Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), will have “massive negative repercussions,” Egypt’s Minister of Irrigation and Water Resources, Mohamed Abdel-Ati, warned yesterday.

Abdel-Ati made the remarks, during his meeting with the U.S. Special Envoy for Sudan, Donald Booth, and Marina Vraila, head of political, press and information section of the European Union (EU) delegation to Cairo, Egypt’s Ministry of Irrigation and Water Resources said.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel’s president will begin consultations with political parties next Monday on their preferred candidate to try to form a government, a spokesman said, after a fourth election in two years ended in another stalemate.

After hearing the parties’ recommendations, President Reuven Rivlin will assign the coalition-building task to one of the candidates by April 7, a spokesman said.

29 Mar 2021; MEMO: Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid on Sunday met with Head of the Ra'am Party Mansour Abbas to discuss forming a coalition government, Israeli media reported.

29 Mar 2021; MEMO: Four Syrian refugees have apparently frozen to death in a mountainous area in eastern Lebanon while trying to cross the border illegally to go back to Syria. While the two women and two children died, eight others were rescued by Lebanese civil defence officers.

29 Mar 2021; MEMO: The Palestinian Supreme Fatwa Council on Sunday warned of the Israeli demolition of Al-Bustan suburb in Jerusalem's neighbourhood of Silwan, Sama News Agency reported.

(AP) --- Delays in freeing a mammoth container ship stuck in Egypt’s Suez Canal have highlighted still more pressure points in global trade, a year after supply chains were disrupted by the pandemic.

Tugboats and salvage crews took advantage of high tides early Monday to partially refloat the Ever Given, which carries cargo between Asia and Europe. Shoei Kisen, the Panama-flagged ship’s Japanese owner, said the bow had moved slightly but was still touching the seafloor, and it was unclear how long it would take to fully reopen the canal.

BEIRUT (AP) — At age 19, Fatima al-Omar is at her wits’ end. In the last year alone, she lost her home to fighting in Syria’s last rebel-held enclave and her mother was diagnosed with cancer. She became the sole breadwinner for her mother, three siblings and grandmother as they moved around between shelters.