* U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris officially accepted the Democratic Party's presidential nomination at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) held at the United Center in Chicago on Thursday night.
* French President Emmanuel Macron meets with party leaders from the left, center and right on Friday with the aim, nearly seven weeks after inconclusive parliamentary elections, to finally give the country a new prime minister.
* Thailand has postponed its hosting of next month's BIMSTEC summit of the leaders of seven mostly South Asian countries until after a new administration is formed, its foreign ministry said on Friday.
* Climate change and security will dominate discussions at next week's meeting of Pacific Islands leaders in Tonga. United Nations Secretary General António Guterres will also travel to Tonga, which has a population of 100,000 spread across 36 islands and is reliant on overseas aid, to highlight the need for greater climate change assistance.
* China and Belarus have agreed to strengthen cooperation in a range of sectors including trade, security, energy and finance, according to a joint statement, after Chinese Premier Li Qiang met Belarusian Prime Minister Roman Golovchenko in Minsk.
* India's Narendra Modi arrived in wartime Kyiv on Friday to hold talks with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the first trip by an Indian prime minister to Ukraine since Kyiv gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
* Russia accused Ukraine on Friday of trying to attack the Kursk nuclear power station overnight in what it called an act of "nuclear terrorism", days before the head of the U.N. atomic watchdog is due to visit the site.
* The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Thursday that he will visit the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) next week to assess the situation after Russia informed the agency of attempted attacks on the facility earlier in the day.
* The NATO air base in the German town of Geilenkirchen remained at high alert on Friday, a spokesperson said, after the security level was raised overnight "based on intelligence information indicating a potential threat".
* United States and Argentina have signed an agreement that aims to strengthen their cooperation regarding critical minerals, the U.S. State Department said on Thursday, following a signing ceremony in Buenos Aires.
* Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Thursday dismissed criticism by some global financial firms of his administration's proposed judicial reforms, saying their warnings of impending risk to the economy were "pure lies."
* The United Arab Emirates has accepted the credentials of a Taliban-appointed diplomat as the ambassador of Afghanistan, a UAE official said on Thursday, making the Gulf state the second country after China to accept a Taliban envoy at that level.
* Australia will take command of the maritime task force in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden from October, the defence ministry said on Friday.
* Nepali Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli said on Thursday that his government is working on a plan to export 15,000 megawatts of hydropower to foreign countries in the next 10 years.
* Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has declared his intention and the intention of the Palestinian leadership to head to Gaza, and called for leaders from around the globe to join him and to support this initiative, a Palestinian envoy said on Thursday.
* Iran's new Foreign Minister Seyyed Abbas Araghchi on Thursday exchanged views on bilateral ties with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell during two separate phone calls.
* The U.S. Central Command on Friday said its naval forces in the Red Sea had intercepted three bomb-laden drones launched by the Houthi group in Yemen.
* Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia' al-Sudani and visiting Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud discussed on Thursday regional developments and jointly urged a ceasefire in Gaza.
* Bank of Japan (BOJ) Governor Ueda Kazuo on Friday warned that markets at home and abroad remain unstable, adding the authorities will closely monitor the situation with extremely high vigilance after a market rout earlier this month following the central bank's latest interest rate hike.
* The Swedish economy is currently in recession, but a brighter future lies ahead, according to a new forecast from the Ministry of Finance published on Thursday.
* The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) Secretariat said Thursday that it received updated compensation plans from Iraq and Kazakhstan for their overproduced oil volumes in the first seven months of 2024.
* Russian gas producer Gazprom GAZP.MM said it would send 42.4 million cubic metres (mcm) of gas to Europe via Ukraine on Friday, the same volume as on Thursday.
* The number of babies born in Spain in the first six months (H1) of 2024 fell by a quarter from a decade ago, according to estimates released by the National Institute of Statistics (INE) on Thursday.
* The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Thursday approved and granted emergency use authorization for updated mRNA COVID-19 vaccines to better protect against currently circulating variants.
* Authorities in the Australian state of Queensland have issued an urgent health warning over a rise in whooping cough cases.
* At least 22 people were killed and two others went missing as heavy rains over the past four days triggered massive flooding and landslides in India's northeastern state of Tripura, officials said Friday.
* Moldova's Health Ministry on Thursday confirmed a recent case of West Nile virus (WNV) infection in a 49-year-old man who had returned from Italy.
* Soldiers in lifeboats ferried people to safety on Friday in India's northeastern state of Tripura after heavy rain triggered floods and landslides, forcing more than 65,000 people from their homes and killing 23, authorities said.
* Iceland's Reykjanes peninsula has seen a string of volcanic eruptions since 2021 when geological systems dormant for around 800 years became active again.
* At least 14 people died, 16 were injured and more feared missing after a bus carrying 40 Indians plunged into a river in Nepal, a spokesperson for the Himalayan nation's armed police said on Friday.
* Robbers armed with guns and rocket-propelled grenades ambushed a police convoy in Pakistan on Thursday, killing at least eleven officers and wounding others, the police and interior ministry said.
