* Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio is likely to reshuffle his cabinet between Sept. 11 to 13, the Yomiuri Shimbun daily reported on Thursday.
* China is "very disappointed" the United States has moved to prohibit some investments in technology, a spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington said on Wednesday.
* India, Japan, the United States and Australia will hold the Malabar navy exercise off the coast of Sydney on Friday, the first time the war games previously held in the Indian Ocean have taken place in Australia.
* China will deepen and expand trade and investment cooperation with South Africa and promote more South African exports to China, its commerce ministry said in a statement late on Wednesday.
* Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will travel to the United States for an official visit in late October, the first since winning election last year, according to a statement from his office on Thursday.
* The United States and Canada issued new sanctions against Belarus on Wednesday, designating several entities and individuals over alleged human rights abuses and support for Russia amid the conflict in Ukraine.
* The Russian Defense Ministry said on Thursday that it had thwarted Ukraine's attempts to carry out attacks with drones, which caused no casualties or damage.
* The government of Poland will deploy 2,000 troops to the country's border with Belarus to maintain stability, Deputy Interior Minister Maciej Wasik told the Polish Press Agency (PAP) on Wednesday.
* Saudi Arabia's embassy in Iran has officially resumed its operations after being shut down for seven years due to severed bilateral relations, Iran's official news agency IRNA reported on Wednesday.
* Concerns about food security and the detrimental consequences of geopolitical conflicts on the agricultural food supply chain have come under the spotlight at the ongoing 13th BRICS Ministers of Agriculture meeting, which is held in South Africa's Limpopo Province.
* Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva criticized Wednesday what he called "green neocolonialism" and demanded funding commitments from developed countries for sustainable projects.
* Fernando Villavicencio, Ecuador's candidate for the presidential election later this month, was killed on Wednesday in an armed attack following a political rally held in Quito, the country's capital, Ecuadorian President Guillermo Lasso confirmed.
* U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is very concerned about the reported "deplorable living conditions" of Niger's President Mohamed Bazoum and his family in arbitrary detention, a U.N. spokesperson said in a statement on Wednesday.
* The junta that seized power in Niger late last month read out on state television overnight a list of 21 people that it said will become ministers in a new government.
* Israeli forces killed a Palestinian militant in a clash in the occupied West Bank on Thursday, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade armed group said.
* Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Wednesday tamped down expectations for his country's renewed ties with the Arab world, in his first televised interview since Damascus's membership of the Arab League was restored in May.
* Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday that public funds for Arab municipalities would be used for the designated purpose of serving Arab citizens following evaluation and supervision, a day after a cabinet minister's announcement to freeze them drew criticism.
* Over 41 migrants are feared dead in the latest shipwreck on the treacherous route across the central Mediterranean, it emerged this week.
* UN Assistant Secretary-General for Africa Martha Pobee on Wednesday stressed the need for a negotiated solution to end the military conflict in Sudan as soon as possible.
* The UN World Food Program (WFP) said that some 76.7 million people were food insecure in Eastern Africa as of early July, a decrease compared to the lean season in 2022.
* China on Thursday announced the resumption of group tours to dozens more overseas destinations, including Japan, Britain, the United States and Australia.
* Cambodia exported products worth 13.52 billion USD in the first seven months of this year, down 1.8 percent from 13.77 billion dollars in the same period last year, said a General Department of Customs and Excise's report released on Thursday.
* South Korea's economy was expected to grow 1.5 percent in 2023, unchanged compared to the estimate unveiled three months earlier, the state-run think tank Korea Development Institute (KDI) said Thursday.
* Germany's gas price cap will be much cheaper than expected, costing only a third of what the government had originally set aside, the country's ifo Institute for Economic Research said on Wednesday.
* Egypt's annual headline inflation in July rose to an all-time high of 36.5%, in line with analysts' expectations, as food prices soared, data from the country's statistics agency CAPMAS showed on Thursday.
