* Israel said it approved the reopening of the Erez crossing into northern Gaza and the temporary use of Ashdod port in southern Israel, following U.S. demands to increase humanitarian aid supplies into Gaza.
* Icelandic Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdottir announced on Friday that she will resign from her post and run for president, public broadcaster RUV and daily Morgunbladid reported.
* Russia said on Friday that strategic security issues, including space-based weapons, were the main potential area for dialogue with the United States.
* The Russian Investigative Committee said on Friday that evidence shows a potential link between the deadly terrorist attack at Crocus City Hall near Moscow and the ongoing special military operation in Ukraine.
* The United States and European Union will continue to support Armenia and ethnic Armenians from the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region, leaders from both sides of the Atlantic pledged as they were meeting with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on Friday.
* Ecuador's government declared Mexico's ambassador to the country unwelcome on Thursday, citing "unfortunate" comments from the Mexican president about Ecuador's violence-plagued elections last year.
* Israel on Friday denounced a resolution passed by the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) calling for Israel to be held accountable for possible "war crimes" in the Gaza Strip as "an anti-Israeli act."
* Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif will meet the Saudi crown prince during a two-day visit to Riyadh that starts on Saturday, the foreign ministry said.
* More than 33,091 Palestinians have been killed and 75,750 have been injured in Israel's military offensive on Gaza since Oct. 7, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Friday.
* Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides will discuss with the head of the European Commission on Sunday an unprecedented surge in arrivals of mainly Syrian refugees this week on the island and he will then visit Lebanon on Monday, officials said.
* Lebanon's caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, has said Israeli air strikes have turned southern Lebanon into a "devastated agricultural area".
* The Israeli military on Friday admitted in a statement that its killing of seven workers with the World Central Kitchen (WCK) aid group was "a grave mistake stemming from a serious failure due to a mistaken identification and errors in decision-making."
* China's inter-regional passenger traffic surged to around 262.14 million on Thursday, the first day of the three-day Qingming Festival holiday, data from the Ministry of Transport showed Friday.
* Cambodia attracted fixed-asset investment of 2.2 billion USD in the first quarter (Q1) of 2024, a sharp rise of 649 percent compared to the same period last year, said a Council for the Development of Cambodia (CDC)'s report released on Friday.
* Russia's unemployment rate has dropped to a record low of less than 3 percent, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday.
* India's central banking institution, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), on Friday announced it has kept the repo rate unchanged at 6.5 percent. The repo rate is the rate at which the central bank lends money to commercial banks in the event of shortfall of funds.
* Thailand's headline inflation dropped for the sixth consecutive month in March due to lower fresh food prices from increased market supply and last year's high comparative base, official data showed on Friday.
* Slovenia's economy is expected to expand by 0.9 percent in the first quarter of 2024, the central bank said Thursday. Although the economy slowed down from last quarter's growth of 1.1 percent, it is 0.6 percent higher than the same period of 2023.
* French sugar beet farmers will be allowed to use more pesticide this year due to a high risk of attacks from an insect carrying a disease that ravaged crops in 2020, France's deputy agriculture minister said on Friday.
* The World Food Programme said on Friday it had negotiated the delivery of the first two convoys of food aid into Sudan's Darfur region in months, amid warnings of impending famine caused by a one-year war and lack of access to food aid.
* The World Bank (WB) announced Thursday a portfolio of 6 billion USD to support the inclusive development of Cote d'Ivoire through accelerating economic growth, energy transition and finance.
* The United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS) on Thursday vowed to sustain efforts to make Somalia free of explosive remnants of war (ERW).
* Torrential rains pummelled Australia's southeast on Friday, dumping almost a month's worth of rainfall on Sydney and triggering flood warnings, with authorities urging people to avoid non-essential travel and stay indoors.
