Mena Today

Lebanon will take part in talks with Israel scheduled for next week in Rome, a Lebanese official said Saturday, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Moldova's pro-European President Maia Sandu has nominated 44-year-old financier Vasile Tofan to be the country's prime minister, Sandu told a press conference on Saturday.

A US military delegation has arrived in Beirut for talks with the Lebanese army on implementing Israel's withdrawal from one of two "pilot zones" in southern Lebanon, a Lebanese military official told AFP Saturday.

Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi arrived in Oman on Saturday to discuss arrangements for the safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz, with Washington seeking a public pledge of free, secure transit.

A written statement from Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei threatened vengeance for the death of his predecessor and father on Saturday, but added that it would depend not only on Iran but also on "free people around the world".

The Turkish prosecutor has ordered the detention of 36 people, including the mayor of an Ankara district held by the main opposition, as part of an investigation into alleged bribery and tender rigging, the Ankara chief prosecutor's office said on Saturday.

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday he had ordered the military to be prepared to launch strikes against Iran if the Iranian government carried out or attempted an assassination of the president.

Spain's High Court placed Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez's former chief of staff and postmaster general under investigation on Friday as part of a wide-ranging corruption probe, ordering police to seize and analyse his mobile phone data.

The U.S. Department of Commerce loosened export controls on the United Arab Emirates on Friday, making it easier to export military items, certain commercial satellites and spacecraft, according to a U.S. government posting in the Federal Register. 

The whereabouts of Mojtaba Khamenei have been a mystery to Iranians and the rest of the world alike since his appointment as supreme leader a week after the strike that killed his father at the end of February.

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday that Iran had asked to continue talks and the U.S. had agreed, but that the June ceasefire was "over".  

Countries should reject efforts by Iran to impose sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz and Tehran's "unilateral decision" to create a body to control traffic through the waterway, the U.N. shipping agency's governing council agreed on Friday.