* Senegal has a new government with 25 ministers and five junior ministers, Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko said on Friday, following the president's landslide election victory in March.
* The Republic of Korea's early voting turnout for parliamentary elections hit a record high of 31.28 percent, the country's election watchdog data showed Saturday. Of 44,280,011 eligible voters, 13,849,043 voters cast their ballots at 3,565 polling stations across the country for the past two days, according to the National Election Commission (NEC).
* He Lifeng, Chinese vice premier and Chinese lead person for China-U.S. economic and trade affairs, held several rounds of talks with U.S. Secretary of Treasury Janet Yellen, also U.S. lead representative, on Friday and Saturday in the city of Guangzhou in south China.
* Defence forces of the U.S., Japan, Australia and the Philippines will conduct "maritime cooperative activity" on April 7 to support a free and open Indo-Pacific, the countries said on Saturday.
* U.S. President Joe Biden's re-election campaign announced Saturday it raised over $187 million in the first quarter 2024, almost double what it took in during the previous quarter.
* Russia on Friday warned Ukraine and its Western allies against attempts to attack or destabilize the situation on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (NPP), according to the Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova.
* The Russian military has carried out 39 group strikes against Ukraine over the past week, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Friday. The strikes were in response to Ukraine's attempts to attack Russian oil and gas industry facilities, the ministry said.
* Mexico suspended its diplomatic relations with Ecuador after Ecuadorian police broke into the Mexican embassy in Quito and arrested former Ecuadorian Vice President Jorge Glas, who has been taking refuge in the embassy since last December.
* A Hamas delegation headed by the group's deputy chief in Gaza, Khalil Al-Hayya, will go to Cairo on April 7 for Gaza ceasefire talks, in response to an invitation extended by Egyptian mediators, the group said in a statement on Saturday.
* The United States is on high alert and preparing for a possible attack by Iran targeting Israeli or American assets in the region in response to an Israeli strike that killed an Iranian military commander in Syria, a U.S. official said on Friday.
* At least 33,137 Palestinians have been killed and 75,815 wounded in Israel's military offensive on Gaza since Oct.7, the Gaza Health Ministry said on Saturday.
* The United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council on Friday adopted a resolution urging Israel to be held responsible for potential war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip. The resolution also urges all nations to cease supplying weapons to Israel.
* The United Nations World Food Program (WFP) warned on Friday that Sudan's hunger crisis will worsen unless its people receive a constant flow of aid via all possible humanitarian corridors.
* Japan has revised down its assessment of the economy for February following a drop in the composite index of coincident economic indicators, according to a government report.
* Malaysia is making progress in combating plastic pollution as it formulates a national policy on plastic production, use and waste, an official said on Friday.
* Ukraine's international reserves soared to a record high of about 43.8 billion USD as of April 1, the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) said in a statement Friday.
* Ghana's cocoa industry regulator late Friday announced a 58.2 percent hike in the producer price of cocoa for farmers with immediate effect.
* The Afghan caretaker government has released 406 detainees from the central jail of the country, the state-run Bakhtar news agency reported on Saturday.
* Turkish authorities have detained 48 people suspected of having ties to Islamic State in connection with a shooting at an Istanbul church in January, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said on X on Saturday.
* Iranian police on Saturday announced the arrest of a senior operative of Islamic State with two other members of the group accused of planning a suicide attack during next week's celebrations marking the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
* Russia has evacuated around 2,000 people from their homes in the Russian city of Orsk, Russian officials said on Saturday, a day after rising waters in the Ural river flooded riverside villages and caused a dam to burst.
* China's National Meteorological Center has issued a blue alert on Saturday for rainstorms as heavy downpours are expected to lash parts of the country.
* Australian authorities on Saturday urged people in parts of New South Wales capital Sydney to move to higher ground because of the danger of flooding from torrential rains.
* Two people were killed and seven were wounded, including a police officer, during a shooting at a martini bar in Doral, Florida, the U.S., early on Saturday, police said.
