* China's President Xi Jinping will attend the BRICS leaders' meeting and visit South Africa from Aug. 21-24, the Chinese foreign ministry said in a statement on Friday.
* Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Thursday discussed over the phone the bilateral cooperation in various fields.
* U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Israel's Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer on Thursday spoke about the importance of de-escalating tensions and Washington's commitment to a two-state solution to the Israeli conflict with Palestinians, the State Department said.
* Belarus will not participate in the armed hostilities in Ukraine unless Ukrainians cross the state border, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said on Thursday.
* Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said on Thursday that the government had thwarted several terrorist attacks.
* Polish lawmakers on Thursday passed a resolution to hold a referendum on the same day as parliamentary elections on Oct. 15.
* West African army chiefs were due to hold a second and final day of talks on Friday in Ghana's capital Accra, where they have been hashing out the details of a possible military intervention in Niger if diplomacy fails to reverse a military coup.
* The Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee held a meeting on Thursday to study and arrange work on flood prevention and relief as well as post-disaster restoration and reconstruction.
* Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau convened an emergency meeting on Thursday to discuss the wildfire crisis in the Northwest Territories, local media reported.
* Herman Andaya, the administrator of Maui Emergency Management Agency, resigned Thursday, citing health reasons, according to the official Facebook page of Maui County.
* UN peacekeepers in Mali closed their Goundam camp and moved safely in a convoy of personnel and equipment to Timbuktu, a UN spokesman said on Thursday.
* The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) said the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Agreement has the potential to transform the fortunes of the demographic dividend in Africa.
* The Malaysian economy expanded moderately in the second quarter of 2023 at 2.9 percent as compared to 5.6 percent in the first quarter, weighed mainly by slower external demand, said Malaysian Central Bank on Friday.
* Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati warned Thursday that his caretaker government is "running out of capabilities" to keep the public institutions running.
* The New Zealand government has worked with farming leaders to design a final plan to reduce agricultural emissions, Agriculture Minister Damien O'Connor said on Friday.
* Norway's central bank has decided to increase policy rate by 0.25 percentage points to 4 percent, in an effort to bring down inflation to the target level.
* Drivers in Italy were confronted with the highest gasoline prices in more than a year on Thursday, with high demand and a new surge in global petroleum prices driving the upward trend.
* Kazakhstan plans to supply 1.2 million metric tons of oil to Germany via the Russian Druzhba pipeline in 2024, Interfax news agency cited Kazakh state pipeline operator KazTransOil KZTO.KZ as saying on Friday.
* A strong earthquake of 6.3 magnitude struck the Colombian capital Bogota on Thursday, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, prompting frightened residents to flee into the street and leading a woman to fall to her death.
* Firefighters on Thursday struggled to contain a wildfire that broke out in a mountainous national park on the Spanish island of Tenerife amid hot and dry weather, that has extended for 41 km and prompted authorities to evacuate more 3,000 people during the day.
* The Lithuanian Hydrometeorological Service announced that a new record daily high temperature was set on August 17, a day after record high weather temperature was observed on August 16.
