* India's finance minister on Friday said New Delhi would continue to purchase crude from Russia as its people required oil at a discount after the surge in global prices.
* Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko held a phone call with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Friday to discuss the situation in Ukraine and their countries' bilateral relations, Belarus' Belta news agency reported.
* Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom said on Friday it was continuing to supply natural gas to Europe via Ukraine in line with requests from European consumers.
* Daily nominations for Russian gas deliveries to Slovakia via Ukraine rose to their highest since November 30 on Friday, data from Slovak pipeline operator Eustream showed.
* Japan's manufacturing activity grew at a faster pace from the prior month in March as domestic demand got a lift from the waning impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
* Asian shares fell on Friday following the biggest quarterly drop in global equities in two years, as investors worried about the impact of the Russian-Ukrainian crisis and rising risks of recession.
* Tunisia's president said late on Thursday he would not hold elections within three months after he dissolved parliament this week, the latest step in a march to one-man rule after brushing aside most of the democratic constitution.
* Forty-one donors pledged more than 2.44 billion USD for the humanitarian response in Afghanistan and neighboring countries, a top UN official announced Thursday.
* Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Friday finalized their negotiations on a Free Trade Agreement (FTA), an Israeli minister said.
* China reported 1,827 confirmed coronavirus cases for March 31, the national health authority said on Friday, compared with 1,839 a day earlier.
* India's Maharashtra state, home to Mumbai, will make wearing masks optional from April 2 after a steep fall in the number of active cases and deaths from COVID-19 in recent days.
* US Senate negotiators on Thursday were nearing a deal on a 10 billion USD COVID-19 bill to help the federal government acquire more vaccines and medical supplies as it prepares for future variants of the virus that upended American life.
* Malaysia fully reopened its borders on Friday, dropping quarantine requirements for people vaccinated against COVID-19 after two years of strict travel restrictions.
* Republic of Korea decided on Friday to further ease social-distancing rules against COVID-19 for two weeks as the recent resurgence was believed to have peaked last month.
* Italy on Friday began to phase out its COVID-19 restrictions, ending a state of emergency public authorities declared more than two years ago that allowed it to bypass bureaucracy and swiftly impose rules via decrees.
* Germany plans to end mandatory quarantine for most people who catch COVID-19, the health ministry proposed on Thursday, as numbers isolating with the infection top four million.
* Australia's peak public health body has warned that the nation's spike in coronavirus cases will likely peak in mid-April.
* More than a third of high school students surveyed in the United States experienced stress, anxiety or depression, and nearly a fifth said they seriously considered suicide during the pandemic, US researchers reported on Thursday.
* Much of Canada is facing a fresh COVID-19 wave just as authorities ease measures meant to curb the spread of the virus, emboldened by a brief drop in cases and relatively high vaccination rates.
* Pakistan has disbanded the National Command and Operations Center, which was overseeing the country's COVID-19 response, as infection numbers were at the lowest since the start of the outbreak, the prime minister said.
