Eager to admire colorful foliage, eat sushi and go shopping, droves of tourists from abroad began arriving in Japan on Tuesday, with the end of pandemic-fighting border restrictions that had been in place for more than two years.

"We got the news that we can finally come. We are really, really happy," said Nadine Lackmann, a German who was among the crowd of tourists arriving at Tokyo's Haneda airport.

Tunisians have been hit with soaring food prices and shortages of basic staples in recent weeks, threatening to turn simmering discontent in the North African country — the cradle of the Arab Spring protests — into larger turmoil.

Sugar, vegetable oil, rice and even bottled water periodically disappear from supermarkets and grocery stores. People stand in line for hours for these food essentials that have long been subsidized and are now increasingly available in rations only. When they do appear on the shelves, many people cannot afford to pay the staggering price for them.

Lebanon has launched an online platform to facilitate employment for its nationals in Qatar as the Gulf state prepares to stage the World Cup.

The move, just weeks before the World Cup kicks off on November 20, is aimed at helping to tackle spiraling unemployment in Lebanon as it suffers its worst ever financial crisis.

London-listed firm Energean has begun testing pipes between Israel and the Karish offshore gas field, a key step towards production from the eastern Mediterranean site, a source of friction between Israel and Lebanon.

U.S. President Joe Biden has effectively acknowledged the failure of one of his biggest and most humiliating foreign policy gambles: a fist-bump with the de facto leader of Saudi Arabia, the crown prince associated with human rights abuses.

Biden's awkward encounter with Mohammed bin Salman in July was a humbling attempt to mend relations with the world's most influential oil power at a time when the US. was seeking its help in opposing Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the resulting surge in oil prices.

Two more depositors sought to forcefully withdraw their savings on Thursday in Lebanon.

Just south of Beirut in Khalde, a man tried but was unable to break into a Banque Libano-Française branch, according to depositors' groups, and has since left the scene.

Israel will reject Lebanon's amendments to a U.S.-drafted proposal on resolving a long-running maritime border dispute over gas-rich waters off the Lebanese and Israeli coasts.

A draft agreement floated by U.S. envoy Amos Hochstein aims to settle competing claims over offshore gas fields and was delivered to Lebanese and Israeli officials at the weekend, following years of indirect negotiations.

A Lebanese judge on Thursday fined and issued a six-month travel ban to a woman who stormed her bank with a fake pistol and took her trapped savings to cover her sister's cancer treatment.

Lebanon's cash-strapped banks have imposed strict limits on withdrawals of foreign currency since 2019, tying up the savings of millions of people. About three-quarters of the population has slipped into poverty as the tiny country's economy continues to spiral. The Lebanese pound has lost 90% of its value against the dollar.

Lebanon is grappling to strike a deal with Israel over contested maritime gas fields, but even with an agreement the cash-strapped country faces multiple hurdles before tapping potential hydrocarbon riches, analysts say.

"A deal would mark one step forward but it does not mean that Lebanon has become a gas- or oil-producing country," said Marc Ayoub, an associate fellow at the American University of Beirut's Issam Fares Institute.

Qatar's emir paid his first visit to the Czech Republic on Wednesday for business talks expected to include a potential deal for deliveries of Qatari liquefied natural gas.

Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, who is accompanied by a large delegation, was formally greeted by Czech President Milos Zeman at the Prague Castle.