* Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif will meet opposition leader Raja Riaz on Saturday in a final bid to reach an agreement on a name for a caretaker premier ahead of a general election, local television channel Geo News reported.
* The Southern African Development Community (SADC) will deploy an election observation mission to Zimbabwe next week ahead of the general elections set for Aug. 23, the bloc said Friday.
* The U.S. and China will approve twice the number of passenger flights currently permitted for air carriers to fly between the two countries, the Biden administration said on Friday, in a rare sign of cooperation between the world's largest two economies.
* Russia's Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu inspected remote Arctic garrisons of the Northern Fleet, the ministry said on Saturday, as a detachment of warships was sent to the Arctic Ocean to perform tasks.
* U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke on Friday with former Nigerien President Mahamadou Issoufou and expressed his grave concern at the continued detention of the country's current president, Mohamed Bazoun, and his family, the State Department said.
* West African leaders were weighing their next moves on Saturday as they seek to overturn a military coup in Niger that has rocked the region but also triggered a groundswell of support in the country.
* Ukraine and the United Kingdom (UK) started initial working-level negotiations on a bilateral agreement on security commitments, the Ukrainian presidential press service said Friday.
* Kazakh Minister of Culture and Sports Oralov Askhat Razdykovich has reaffirmed his country's keenness to promote cooperation with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), particularly in joint investment projects and tourism sector, UAE's official news agency WAM reported Friday.
* Morocco has received the first shipments of Barak MX anti-aircraft and missile defense system made by Israel, local media reported on Friday.
* UN humanitarians in Sudan said they negotiated the way for colleagues to deliver relief on Friday into an extremely challenging area of the capital city Khartoum.
* The United Nations said on Friday it had completed the removal of more than 1 million barrels of oil from a decaying supertanker off Yemen's Red Sea coast, averting a potential environmental disaster.
* An attack on a military bus in Syria's east killed 23 government troops and wounded more than 10, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) war monitor said on Friday.
* Peru's economy likely shrunk by about 0.5% in the second quarter, the central bank's top economist said on Friday, marking the second consecutive quarter of contraction and the latest warning sign suggesting a technical recession.
* Germany's trade surplus in the first half (H1) of 2023 more than doubled year-on-year to 98.7 billion euros (108.6 billion USD), the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) said Friday.
* The top priority of the Turkish government in the near future is to reinforce macro-financial stability, said Turkish Treasury and Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek on Friday.
* The International Monetary Fund said on Friday it has reached a staff-level agreement with Honduras for a 36-month credit facility for about $830 million to support the country's economic reform policies.
* Namibia has suspended imports of live poultry, birds, and poultry products from Denmark and the Netherlands following the outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza in the two European countries.
* The death toll from the Maui wildfires rose to 80 on Friday as search teams combed through the smoldering ruins of Lahaina, and Hawaiian officials sought to determine how the inferno spread so rapidly through the historic resort town with little warning.
* A state of emergency was declared and evacuations ordered in parts of Russia's Far East on Saturday after heavy downpours flooded villages in the aftermath of Typhoon Khanun that pummelled Japan earlier this week, local authorities said.
