* A black box of the China Eastern Airlines passenger plane that crashed Monday in south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region was recovered on Wednesday afternoon. On Wednesday afternoon, rescuers used professional equipment to detect the underground area of the crash site and even expanded the search area.
* Agreement has been reached to try to evacuate civilians trapped in Ukrainian towns and cities through nine "humanitarian corridors" on Wednesday, Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said.
* The governor of the Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine said agreement had been reached on a local ceasefire to evacuate civilians trapped by fighting.
* Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi will fly to India on Friday, Bloomberg Quint said on Wednesday citing Bloomberg News, in the highest such visit by a Chinese official since border disputes flared between the countries a few years ago.
* India achieved its highest ever goods export target of 400 billion USD Wednesday, nine days ahead of schedule, officials said. The country had set this ambitious export target for FY22.
* Japan lifted a power-supply warning for Tokyo and surrounding areas on Wednesday as supply stabilised, a day after the government had warned of possible blackouts in the aftermath of an earthquake last week.
* Russia will retaliate if its diplomats are expelled from Poland, the RIA news agency cited the foreign ministry as saying on Wednesday.
* Italy's Prime Minister Mario Draghi said it was a priority for European countries to increase production of computer chips as part of a wider effort aimed at strengthening the bloc's economy and protecting key industries.
* China on Tuesday called on Israel to cease expanding settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory.
* Asian equities hit three-week highs on Wednesday as cash fleeing tumbling bond markets flowed back toward big tech and other beaten-up sectors, while the Ukraine conflict's potential to further hit supplies kept oil and commodity prices high.
* Poland's parliament will try to thrash out a compromise on Wednesday over reforms to the Supreme Court that could unlock 36 billion euros of EU COVID-recovery grants and loans being withheld due to a dispute over judicial independence.
* The number of daily COVID-19 infections in Laos hit a new high of 2,625, surpassing the previous record of 1,898 cases on Dec. 11, 2021, according to the Lao Ministry of Health. Meanwhile, 30 imported cases were recorded.
* About one-in-three COVID-19 cases in the United States are now caused by the BA.2 Omicron sub-variant of the coronavirus, according to government data that also showed overall infections still declining from January's record highs.
* Republic of Korea's total coronavirus infections topped 10 million, or nearly 20% of its population, authorities said on Wednesday, as surging severe cases and deaths increasingly put a strain on crematories and funeral homes nationwide.
* New Zealand's government said it would lift vaccine mandates for a number of sectors including teaching and police from April 4 as the current COVID-19 outbreak nears its peak.
* South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said restrictive COVID-19 regulations that have weighed on the nation's struggling economy for two years would be removed, with the national state of disaster also to end soon.
