Egypt

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said on Aug. 2 an Egyptian truce plan provides a "real chance" to end the Gaza conflict, stressing the need for its speedy implementation.

"The Egyptian proposal is the real chance to find a solution to the crisis in Gaza and to end the bloodshed," Sisi told a joint news conference with visiting Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi.

Last week American television journalist Charlie Rose hosted former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. When answering Rose’s question on Israel-Palestine, Clinton said: “Turkey is the principal interlocutor that I would look to.”

“A class of human beings that has formed an integral part of Muslim society up to the present day is that of the slaves. [the Prophet] Muhammad took over the slavery system, upon which ancient society was based, seemingly without question and regarding it as part of the natural order of the universe.

Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia and Serbia have urged their citizens based currently in Libya to leave, saying embassies there cannot guarantee their safety due to the increased violence.

Turkey and Qatar have welcomed the U.N.-brokered 72-hour humanitarian cease-fire between Palestinian resistance factions and Israel that began in the Gaza Strip on Aug. 1, and reaffirmed commitment on further efforts for a sustainable cease-fire.

Residuals of the misery and loss from the civil war still dominates the mood and topics of the Lebanese cinema, with particularly the movies of the recent years focusing on tackling tragedies of the past Lebanon’s civil war ended a quarter of a century ago but its filmmakers remain fixated on this dark period, seeing their movies as a kind of catharsis to help heal collective trauma.

Wheat prices for this year’s crop will be five to 10 percent lower compared to 2013, the Chief Executive Director of the Sofia Commodity Exchange (SCE) Vasil Simov said.

The title of this column is borrowed from Yalçın Akdoğan, a close advisor to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and a columnist for the daily Star newspaper.

The European Commission said Tuesday it would release a further 50 million euros ($67 million) in humanitarian aid for Syria as the crisis there deepens.
      

France was evacuating its nationals from Libya on Tuesday amid increasing lawlessness and unrest, a government source said, after similar moves by other European nations.
      
There are less than 100 French nationals in Libya and they will be taken out of the country by ship, the source said, adding that the operation would be over by the afternoon.