CYPRUS: At least seven people have been hospitalised after Cypriot police rescued 60 Syrian migrants found aboard a rickety wooden boat some 34 miles off the island nation’s south-eastern tip, authorities said today.

The migrants have reportedly been at sea for six days.

LEBANON: A Libyan delegation visited Beirut today to reopen talks with Lebanese officials on the fate of a prominent Lebanese cleric who has been missing in Libya for decades, and on the release of late Libyan leader Muammar Gadaffi’s son, Hannibal, who has been held in Lebanon for years, officials said.

The talks were aimed at reactivating a dormant agreement between Lebanon and Libya, struck in 2014, for co-operation in the probe of the 1978 disappearance of Shi’ite cleric Moussa al-Sadr, judicial and security officials said.

ITALY: Italy’s lower chamber of parliament today approved a government deal with Albania to house migrants during the processing of their asylum requests, a cornerstone of PM Giorgia Meloni’s efforts to share the “migration burden” with the rest of Europe.

The proposal, which passed 155-115 with two abstentions in the Chamber of Deputies, now goes to the Senate, where Ms Meloni’s ultra-right-wing forces also have a comfortable majority.

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has endorsed the migration outsourcing deal.

FRANCE: French farmers staged protests Wednesday across the country and in Brussels against low wages and what they consider to be excessive national and European regulation, mounting costs and other problems.

Farmers are protesting against what they argue are nonsensical government and European Union agricultural policies.