* India voted on Friday in the second phase of the world's biggest election , as Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his rivals raise the pitch of the campaign by focusing on hot-button issues such as religious discrimination, affirmative action and taxes.
* The weather bureau of Laos is advising members of the public to avoid outdoor activities and take precautions in order to ensure their well-being as temperatures continue to rise across Laos.
* Cambodia is making significant progress towards achieving its self-imposed malaria-free goal by 2025, the country's Prime Minister Hun Manet said on Thursday.
* Indonesia has already begun its preparation for hosting the 10th World Water Forum, the first of its kind in the Southeast Asia region, which will take place in the country's resort island of Bali in May.
* Azerbaijan, host of this year's U.N. climate summit, will defend the right of oil and gas producing nations to invest in the sector, the country's president said on Friday, noting that despite climate targets, fossil fuel demand remains strong.
* The Asian Development Bank (ADB)'s financial and operational expenses reached 23.6 billion USD from its own resources in 2023, including 9.8 billion dollars for climate action, to help Asia and the Pacific progress on sustainable development, according to a new ADB report released Thursday.
* Russia and Europe will no longer be able to resume their past relations under the current circumstances, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Friday.
* The Russian and Turkish flags were lowered on Friday to mark the closure of a centre set up to monitor a ceasefire in Nagorno-Karabakh, as Russian peacekeepers ended a multi-year deployment in the strategic South Caucasus region.
* Europe could die of three challenges it faces in security, economy and culture, French President Emmanuel Macron said Thursday in a speech on Europe at Sorbonne University in Paris.
* Pope Francis will attend this year's Group of Seven (G7) leaders' summit to discuss the challenges posed by Artificial Intelligence (AI), Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said on Friday.
* Sweden should raise its military spending to around 2.6% of GDP by 2030, a parliamentary committee said in a report on Friday, as the country rebuilds its defence capabilities after joining NATO in March.
* Sweden has finalized its integration into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and will send a reduced battalion to Latvia early next year, Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said on Thursday.
* French Defence Minister Sebastien Lecornu and his German counterpart Boris Pistorius said on Friday their countries were ready to move ahead with a project to jointly develop a new tank, meant to become the central pillar of both country's ground defence.
* France is working with Germany to convince their European partners to provide more air defence capacities to Ukraine, French Defence Minister Sebastien Lecornu said on Friday.
* Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif will participate in the 15th summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to be held in Gambia's capital Banjul from May 4 to May 5, the Pakistani Foreign Ministry said on Friday.
* UN Special Envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen on Thursday stressed the need for regional de-escalation. This last month, the grim specter of regional conflict loomed over Syria once again, he told the Security Council.
* Ariel Henry has resigned as the prime minister of Haiti, paving the way for a new government of the Caribbean country, local media reported on Thursday. The post will be temporarily held by Michel Patrick Boisvert, minister of economy and finance.
* Israel is expected to "soon" begin evacuating civilians from Rafah ahead of a planned ground attack on Gaza's southernmost city, state-owned Israeli Kan TV reported on Thursday.
* Hamas on Friday criticised a proposal from the United States and 17 other countries that called on it to release all of its hostages as a pathway to end the crisis in Gaza, saying it failed to address Palestinian demands, a statement said.
* At least 34,356 Palestinians have been killed and 77,368 wounded in Israel's military offensive on Gaza since Oct. 7, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Friday.
* Hezbollah announced on Friday that it had prepared at dawn an ambush of guided missiles, artillery, and rockets for an Israeli convoy in the occupied Kfarchouba hills southeast of Lebanon.
* Liberia, Benin, and Sierra Leone have rolled out a malaria vaccine, targeting millions of children across the three West African nations, the World Health Organization (WHO) said.
* Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub completed their spacewalk tasks ahead of schedule, returning to the International Space Station (ISS) two hours earlier than planned, Russia's state space corporation Roscosmos said on Thursday.
* Russian energy giant Gazprom GAZP.MM said it would send 42.4 million cubic metres (mcm) of natural gas to Europe via Ukraine on Friday, the same volume as on Thursday.
* Countries in the World Trade Organization are resuming stalled negotiations on fixing its dispute settlement system by the end of this year, a document showed on Friday, after they overcame difficulties in choosing a chief negotiator.
* U.S. inflation rose moderately in March, but that is unlikely to change financial markets' expectations that the Federal Reserve will hold off cutting interest rates until September.
* Indonesia's economy is expected to increase by 5 percent in 2024 and 2025, primarily coming from domestic private consumption and investment, according to Asian Development Bank (ADB) projections.
* Pakistan's economic indicators are showing positive signs, with an agenda of painful reforms and privatization on track, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said on Friday, ahead of an IMF board meeting to decide on a $1.1 billion funding for the country.
* Singapore's manufacturing production decreased 9.2 percent year-on-year in March, according to data released by the Economic Development Board Friday. Biomedical manufacturing production contracted 34.3 percent year-on-year last month, mainly led by a 54.1-percent decline in the pharmaceuticals segment.
* The Finnish Ministry of Finance downgraded its growth estimate for the country on Thursday, forecasting that the Finnish economy will not grow this year. In December, it predicted a 0.7 percent GDP increase.
* Argentina's government on Wednesday promised not to close or defund public universities following massive marches across the country demanding continued funding of higher education.
* The Maldives is taking steps to reduce USD transactions outside the formal banking system to ensure that there is no dollar shortage in the country, Maldivian media reported on Thursday, quoting Minister of Finance Mohamed Shafeeq as saying.
* Over 2 million international tourists have visited the Philippines since January this year, the Presidential Communications Office (PCO) said Thursday. Citing data from the Department of Tourism (DOT), the PCO said that 2,010,522 international visitors entered the Southeast Asian country from Jan. 1 to April 24.
