On a hot, humid East Coast day this summer, a massive container ship pulled into the Port of Baltimore loaded with sheets of plywood, aluminum rods and radioactive material – all sourced from the fields, forests and factories of Russia.

President Joe Biden promised to "inflict pain" and deal "a crushing blow" on Vladimir Putin through trade restrictions on commodities like vodka, diamonds and gasoline in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine six months ago. But hundreds of other types of unsanctioned goods worth billions of dollars, including those found on the ship bound for Baltimore from St. Petersburg, Russia, continue to flow into U.S. ports.

They fan out along the tense frontier with Israel in the pre-dawn darkness, setting traps and training their eyes on the other side of the separation fence — where the parakeets are.

Dozens of Palestinian men and boys have taken up bird trapping in recent years. It's a rare if meager source of income in Gaza, which has been under a crippling Israeli-Egyptian blockade since the militant Hamas group seized power 15 years ago.

Caretaker Energy Minister Walid Fayyad has said that his Ministry has not received “any official or unofficial offer from Turkey for drilling in the border (offshore) blocks.”

“Block 9 is tendered to the TotalEnergies company and when I was in Turkey no one raised the issue with me,” Fayyad told al-Mayadeen television.

Lebanon, which is yet to reach a sea border demarcation deal with Israel, has received a Turkish proposal for investment and drilling in the southern oil and gas blocks near Israel’s border, a Lebanese official source said.

“The Turkish proposal involves drilling and investment works in Block 9, which lies on the maritime border,” the source told Russia’s Sputnik news agency.

The euro dived Tuesday to a new two-decade dollar low and equities wavered, as data highlighted the shrinking Eurozone economy and the worsening energy crunch.

The single currency, hit also by the U.S. Federal Reserve's rate-hiking plans before this week's hotly-awaited comments from Chair Jerome Powell, tumbled to $0.9901.

The euro pushed further below parity with the dollar on Monday, hitting its lowest level since 2002, the year it came into physical circulation, as recession fears mounted.

The euro was down 0.84 percent to $0.9951 at 1525 GMT .

The Central Bank and the Ministry of Energy have informed oil importing companies that gasoline subsidization will be lowered by another 15% as of the beginning of this week, LBCI TV reported on Monday.

According to the new scheme, the importing companies will now get 45% of their dollars through the Sayrafa platform and 55% from the black market. Under the previous scheme, they used to get 70% of their dollars via Sayrafa and 30% from the black market.

A new gas discovery off Cyprus' southern coast that's estimated to contain around 2.5 trillion cubic feet of the hydrocarbon bolsters Europe's efforts to secure alternative energy sources, the Cypriot energy ministry said Monday, as a supply crisis triggered by Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues to trouble the continent.

The Ministry said in a statement that the discovery by partners Eni of Italy and France's Total was made at the Cronos-1 well 160 kilometers (100 miles) off the coast in 2,287 meters (7,500 feet) of water inside Cyprus' exclusive economic zone and is the second deposit that the Eni-Total consortium has discovered there.

China has gained a major foothold in oil-rich Iraq, shaking up Western domination in fields from energy to construction, even as some warn that infrastructure projects could leave Baghdad in debt.

After decades of conflict, Iraq is "badly in need of foreign investment, and specifically investment in energy sector infrastructure", said John Calabrese of the Middle East Institute in Washington.

The Entrepreneurship in the MENA survey, conducted recently by Bayt.com, a leading job site in the Gulf and Middle East, and market research agency YouGov, has found that nearly three-quarters (73%) of Lebanon respondents would like to be self-employed or have their own business if given the choice.

The survey found that even among those who are employed, 65% are currently thinking of starting their own business. 17% of respondents have tried to start their own business in the past, while 8% never thought of establishing a new company. Be my own boss (48%), freedom to choose work-life balance (42%), personal fulfilment (40%) and build a business my children can inherit (36%) emerge as the top reasons for preferring to be self-employed.