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Hours after Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar reportedly claimed that the Aegean Sea and Cyprus lie within Turkey's territorial waters, his Greek counterpart Evangelos Apostolakis urged Ankara officials to refrain from unreasonable statements that fuel bilateral tension.

Russia will begin delivering natural gas to Hungary via the TurkStream pipeline in the second half of 2021, Peter Szijjarto, the Hungarian minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade said on March 21.

Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar has generated fresh controversy by claiming that the Aegean Sea and Cyprus lie within Turkey's territorial waters, according to reports Friday.
"We control the sea and the seabed. The seas. The Black Sea, the Aegean, the Eastern Mediterraenan which also includes Cyprus," Akar reportedly said.

58,000 asylum applications in the EU have been filed since the beginning of this year, the European Asylum Support Office said. Half are denied. Although migratory pressure on the EU is declining, asylum applications are increasing. Malta is one of the first to welcome migrant boats.

Foreign Minister Yorgos Katrougalos and his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu held talks in the Turkish seaside resort of Antalya as the first step toward a sweeping dialogue that Alexis Tsipras and Tayyip Erdogan had announced during their recent meeting in Ankara.

Cyprus wants access to the European Union's security intelligence network so it can screen arriving migrants more thoroughly for signs of radicalization by extremist groups, the Mediterranean island nation's interior minister said Thursday.

Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society Mariya Gabriel said on Thursday in Cluj-Napoca that the first European digital programme, 'Digital Europe', has an allocation of 9 billion euro.

Several explosions echoed in Afghanistan's capital Kabul , international news agencies have reported.

According to Afghan officials, three explosive devices exploded near a Shiite temple and cemetery in the western part of the Afghan capital, the Associated Press reported.

Six people were killed and 23 were injured, Reuters reported.

Israel plans to build advanced marine radar on the Greek island of Crete in a bid to watch the route of a planned natural gas pipeline that will carry gas to Greek Cyprus and Greece.

The 6th Trilateral Greece-Greek Cyprus-Israel Summit, with the participation of the United States, began in Jerusalem on March 20 afternoon to advance energy and security in the eastern Mediterranean.