Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Tuesday to cap a trip which has seen several high-level cooperation agreements signed in several areas including education, agriculture, environmental protection, technology and tourism. “We think that by working together we can make the future better for our peoples, but also I think for humanity as a whole,” Netanyahu told his host.

Iranian officials issued furious statements against the Kremlin on Tuesday, accusing their erstwhile allies of providing Israel with computer codes enabling Israeli jets to avoid Syrian anti-aircraft missiles fired at them during last Friday’s strikes on Hezbollah targets. According to a report in a Kuwaiti newspaper this week, this is the only explanation the Iranian experts can think of for why the Russian-built air defense systems have consistently failed to protect Syrian airspace from Israeli incursions.

The USS George H.W. Bush passed through the strategic Strait of Hormuz into the Persian Gulf on Tuesday, the first time an American carrier has made the trip since President Donald Trump took office. Warships from the US and European allies accompanied the Bush, which whose presence was seen by analysts as an announcement that the US was “back” in the Persian Gulf and would begin to more aggressively confront Iran’s increasingly bellicose threats to regional order.

Israel’s small but growing community of baseball enthusiasts is hoping to build off the recent success of the national team at the World Baseball Classic tournament to raise the profile of the sport by constructing new facilities in the Holy Land, including a state of the art stadium at a site in Beit Shemesh. “Previously, the IAB was forced to rent soccer fields from surrounding communities for kids in the league to play,” said an Israel Association of Baseball press release. “However, the organization is expanding its efforts and hopes to rapidly promote baseball as a leading sport in Israel.”

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin announced on Tuesday that his visit to the southeast Asian country of Vietnam has produced an agreement to increase cooperation in several areas, including trade in military equipment and security training and expertise. In public remarks to Vietnamese Defense Minister Ngo, Rivlin said: “You and I grew up in countries which were battlefields. We all know that quiet and peace on the security front should not be taken for granted. We also have to be fully aware of our military capability.”

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s recent remarks that two decades of international diplomacy had failed to halt North Korea’s nuclear weapons program and its missile testing not only made a splash in the Sea of Japan and in the Far East, they were very carefully noted in the Middle East as well.