* Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio said Monday he is not thinking about dissolving the lower house of parliament for a snap election, a day after his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) won parliamentary by-elections in four of five seats.
* Russia on Monday urged Armenia and Azerbaijan to comply with a 2020 ceasefire agreement, expressing "serious concern" about escalating tensions between the two countries over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.
* EU leaders will discuss the bloc's stance towards China and its future relations with the country during their next summit in June, EU Council President Charles Michel said on Monday.
* A German air force plane with 101 people evacuated from Sudan landed in Berlin early on Monday, as countries rushed to extract their citizens from Khartoum amid a deadly power struggle between the army and a paramilitary force.
* Around 10,000 refugees have entered South Sudan from Sudan in recent days fleeing fighting between the army and paramilitary forces, officials in South Sudan's Renk County said on Monday.
* A total of 93 undocumented immigrants were rescued off Tunisian coasts while attempting to cross the Mediterranean to Italy, Tunisian National Guard said Sunday.
* The head of the Russian Grain Union said on Monday the Black Sea grain deal to facilitate Ukrainian agricultural exports had not yielded anything positive for Russia or helped facilitate supplies to the global market.
* Turkey's defence minister said he planned to meet his Syrian, Russian and Iranian counterparts in Moscow on Tuesday, state-owned Anadolu news agency said, amid efforts to rebuild Ankara-Damascus ties after years of animosity during the Syrian war.
* China plans to launch an uncrewed probe around 2025 to collect samples from a near-Earth asteroid and explore a comet, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Monday, citing a senior space expert.
* The United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) strongly condemned the Saturday morning attack against the Malian Armed Forces camp in central Mali.
* Israeli troops killed a Palestinian during a raid in the occupied West Bank, a Palestinian official said, and the army said soldiers had shot at suspected militants who fled arrest.
* Turkey has reduced its foreign dependency in the defense industry from around 80 percent to some 20 percent in the past two decades, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Sunday.
* The Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman on Sunday rebuked the remarks by the US secretary of state about Tehran's military program, saying they are aimed at marketing American weapons.
* Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and the rebel Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) will begin peace negotiations in Tanzania on Tuesday, the two sides said.
* Issuing "catastrophe bonds" and setting up public-private partnerships could help plug the "insurance gap" to better cover damage from climate change, a discussion paper from the European Central Bank and European Union insurance regulators said on Monday.
* Iran's Civil Aviation Organization (CAO) has received a proposal from Saudi Arabia to launch three regular flights between the two countries, Iranian Transport and Urban Development Minister Mehrdad Bazrpash said on Sunday.
* Kenyan police have recovered 58 bodies from mass graves in the Shakahola forest in eastern Kenya, thought to be followers of a Christian cult who believed they would go to heaven if they starved themselves, the country's police chief said on Monday.
* Iranian deputy oil minister Jalil Salari said an average of nearly 10 million liters of diesel are smuggled out of the Islamic republic per day due to its competitive price.
* New Zealand is assessing the possibility of a tsunami risk after a 7.1-magnitude earthquake jolted the country's northeast islands region. The quake hit the Kermadec Islands region with a depth of 49 km at 12:41 p.m. local time.
