* South Korea's constitutional court said Monday that it will hold the first pretrial hearing over President Yoon Suk-yeol's impeachment on Friday as scheduled.
* Romania's outgoing president Klaus Iohannis is expected to designate leftist Social Democrat Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu to form a new government on Monday after three pro-European parties agreed to the details of a parliamentary majority.
* Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday vowed to inflict "many times more destruction" in response to Ukrainian attacks on the Russian city of Kazan on Saturday.
* Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said Russian President Vladimir Putin confirmed Moscow's readiness to continue supplying gas to the West and to Slovakia in a meeting in Moscow on Sunday.
* Donald Trump's transition team is pushing to pull the United States out of the World Health Organization (WHO) on the first day of the new administration, according to experts who warn of the "catastrophic" impact it would have on global health, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Sunday.
* Panamanian President Jose Raul Mulino reaffirmed the country's sovereignty over the Panama canal on Sunday after U.S. President-elect Donald Trump threatened to retake the canal.
* The transportation of Russian crude oil to Hungary via the Friendship Pipeline has resumed, Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Peter Szijjarto said Sunday.
* The Philippine National Police (PNP) on Sunday said it has arrested 57,129 people and seized illicit drugs worth 20.7 billion pesos (roughly 352 million USD) on the black market during its anti-drug operations conducted from Jan. 1 to Dec. 15 this year.
* International medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) on Sunday called for urgent humanitarian support for displaced Sudanese civilians who have fled to neighboring South Sudan.
* The Australian government has announced additional humanitarian assistance for Vanuatu after the Pacific island nation was hit by a devastating earthquake.
* Russia's Gazprom said that it would send 42.1 million cubic metres of gas to Europe via Ukraine on Monday, a volume in line with recent days.
* Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov held a phone talk on Sunday to discuss the developments in Syria and the situation in the Gaza Strip, according to a statement by the Egyptian Foreign Ministry.
* Qatar will stop shipping gas to the EU if member states strictly enforce a new law cracking down on forced labour and environmental damage, Energy Minister Saad al-Kaabi told the Financial Times in an interview published on Sunday.
* Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein and Dutch Defense Minister Ruben Brekelmans met in Baghdad on Sunday, discussing ways to strengthen bilateral relations, particularly regarding military and intelligence cooperation in combating terrorism, said a statement by the Iraqi Foreign Ministry.
* Jordan's Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi will visit Damascus on Monday and meet with Syria's de facto new ruler Ahmed al-Sharaa, the Jordanian foreign ministry said in a post on X.
* European Central Bank (ECB) President Christine Lagarde said the euro zone was getting "very close" to reaching the central bank's medium-term inflation goal, according to an interview published by the Financial Times on Monday.
* Singapore's core inflation, as measured by the consumer price index (CPI), declined to 1.9 percent year-on-year in November from 2.1 percent in October, official data showed Monday.
* In the first 11 months this year, Uzbekistan exported fruits and vegetables worth 1.4 billion USD, reported Uzbek media on Sunday, citing the country's statistics agency.
* Nepal's international trade increased in the first five months of the current 2024-25 fiscal year as both exports and imports climbed over the same period of last fiscal year.
* The death toll from Cyclone Chido, a powerful tropical cyclone that struck northern Mozambique last weekend, has climbed to 94, while the number of injured has risen to 768, according to the latest update from the National Institute for Disaster Risk Management and Reduction (INGD).
* Millions of residents and visitors in southeast Australia have been warned to brace for catastrophic bushfire conditions over the Christmas period.
* An earthquake of magnitude 5.9 struck Cuba on Monday, the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC) said. The quake was at a depth of 25 km (15.53 miles), EMSC said.
* The death toll in a road accident on Saturday in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais has risen to 41, the police said on Sunday.
