* Solomon Islands' Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare has secured his re-election as a member of parliament, national broadcaster SIBC reported on Friday.
* Three Norwegian ministers were replaced in a government reshuffle announced on Friday, marking another step in the cabinet's ongoing transformation since it took office in 2021.
* China's foreign minister Wang Yi on Saturday said efforts to admit a Palestinian state into the United Nations were a move to rectify a prolonged injustice, state media Xinhua reported.
* The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) conducted a power test of a super-large warhead designed for the "Hwasal-1 Ra-3" strategic cruise missile and a test launch of the "Pyoljji-1-2" new-type anti-aircraft missile on Friday afternoon, the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported Saturday.
* The unilateral coercive measures imposed on Venezuela by the United States have led Venezuelans to be determined and to unite in the construction of a new model of a diversified economy, said Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez on Friday.
* The Netherlands will provide more than 200 million euros ($213.26 million) of additional military support to Ukraine for air defence and artillery ammunition, said Dutch defence minister Kajsa Ollongren on Friday.
* Argentina has applied to become a "global partner" of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Defense Minister Luis Petri said Thursday.
* UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres welcomed Friday's agreement on the delimitation of the state border between Armenia and Azerbaijan, said his spokesman.
* Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Saturday that solving the Palestinian issue will promote stability in the Middle East region.
* Foreign ministers from the Group of Seven (G7) countries have urged all parties involved in the Middle East conflicts to prevent further escalation.
* The Palestinian Authority will reconsider bilateral relations with the U.S. after Washington vetoed a Palestinian request for full United Nations membership, President Mahmoud Abbas said in an interview with the official WAFA news agency.
* Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan met on Saturday with Head of the Hamas Political Bureau Ismail Haniyeh in Türkiye's largest city, Istanbul.
* Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said on Friday that Iran will respond at an immediate and "maximum level" if Israel acts against its interests.
* The mayor of Portovelo in Ecuador's southern province of El Oro was killed Friday in an armed attack against the municipal authority, the National Police said.
* Maldives National Defense Force (MNDF) on Saturday morning successfully launched military drones for the first time to aid rescue operations to locate a fishing boat that had gone missing with three people on board.
* More than 800 Afghan refugees have returned to their homeland from neighboring Pakistan on Friday and Thursday, Afghanistan's Ministry for Refugees and Repatriation Affairs said Saturday.
* The United Nations human rights chief called for countries to take concrete steps on reparations for people of African descent at a U.N. meeting on Friday, adding his voice to calls for justice for slavery atrocities.
* Tension between Israel and Iran should not distract from the situation in Gaza and the first priority of the international community should be ending the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said.
* Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan discussed efforts to reach a ceasefire in Gaza and deliver humanitarian aid there with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh during a meeting in Istanbul, state broadcaster TRT said on Saturday.
* French President Emmanuel Macron met Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati and the country's army chief Joseph Aoun in Paris on Friday for talks on how to end cross-border fighting between Hezbollah and Israel and ease a political stalemate in Lebanon.
* Israel's military offensive in the Gaza Strip has killed at least 34,049 Palestinians and wounded 76,901 since Oct. 7, the Palestinian enclave's health ministry said on Saturday.
* Explosions echoed over an Iranian city on Friday in what sources said was an Israeli attack, but Tehran played down the incident and indicated it had no plans for retaliation - a response that appeared gauged towards averting region-wide war.
* Some 800,000 people in a Sudanese city are in "extreme and immediate danger" as worsening violence advances and threatens to "unleash bloody intercommunal strife throughout Darfur," top U.N. officials warned the Security Council on Friday.
* Ecuador's President Daniel Noboa declared a second state of emergency on Friday over an energy crisis that has already led to rationing in the South American country.
* Malaysia's gross domestic product (GDP) is estimated to further expand at 3.9 percent in the first quarter of 2024, official data showed Friday.
* The steering committee for both International Monetary Fund and the World Bank on Saturday emphasized the need for broader accountability as the institutions implemented reforms to help countries grapple with climate change and other shocks.
* Shareholders of the International Monetary Fund agreed this week on the importance of addressing challenges faced by low-income countries, many of which are facing unsustainable debt burdens, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said on Friday.
* The World Bank on Friday said that 11 countries have pledged to contribute over $11 billion to new hybrid capital and portfolio guarantee instruments designed to expand the bank's financing capacity by $70 billion over a decade to tackle climate change, pandemics and other global challenges.
* The World Health Organization is likely to issue a wider warning about contaminated Johnson and Johnson-made JNJ.N children's cough syrup found in Nigeria last week, it said in an email.
* The El Nino dry spell and drought damage to Philippine agriculture has reached over 3.94 billion pesos (roughly 68 million USD), official data released on Friday showed.
* Authorities in the region of Kurgan in Russia's Urals mountains ordered an evacuation from several districts on Saturday due to rising river levels, after large snowfalls melted and heavy rain fell on ground already waterlogged before winter.
* At least 87 people have been killed and 82 others injured in separate rain-triggered incidents in Pakistan over the past week as heavy downpours continued to wreak havoc in parts of the country, the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) said on Friday.
* Deaths from heavy rains earlier this week in the United Arab Emirates rose to four, authorities said on Friday, as well as flooding roads and jamming Dubai's international airport.
