* The United Arab Emirates wants to encourage a political solution in the Ukraine conflict and taking sides would only encourage violence, a senior UAE official said on Sunday.
* Moscow is preparing for negotiations with "all constructive forces" on a settlement in Ukraine, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Saturday in a phone call with his Turkish counterpart, Mevlut Cavusoglu.
* Western allies announced sweeping sanctions against Russia, including barring some key banks from the SWIFT payments system. The move will inflict a crippling economic blow to Moscow but also hurt Western companies and banks.
* At least 64 civilians have been killed and more than 160,000 are on the move after Russian troops entered Ukraine this week, a United Nations relief agency said.
* Kremlin-controlled energy giant Gazprom GAZP.M said on Sunday that Russian gas exports via Ukraine to Europe continued normally, in line with requests from customers.
* Refugees continued to pour across Ukraine's western borders, with around 100,000 reaching Poland in two days.
* Iran is ready to "immediately conclude" a deal in talks to revive its 2015 nuclear accord with world powers if Western powers show real will, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said on Saturday.
* China reported 239 new confirmed coronavirus cases on Feb. 26, the country's national health authority said on Sunday, down from 249 a day earlier. There were no new deaths, leaving the death toll at 4,636. As of Feb. 26, mainland China had confirmed 109,092 cases.
* India's COVID-19 tally rose to 42,916,117 on Sunday, as 10,273 new cases were registered during the past 24 hours across the country, showed the federal health ministry's latest data.
* Malaysia reported 27,299 new COVID-19 infections, as of midnight Saturday, bringing the national total to 3,395,170, according to the country's health ministry.
* The Philippines' Department of Health (DOH) reported 1,038 new COVID-19 infections on Sunday, bringing the number of confirmed cases in the Southeast Asian country to 3,661,049.
* Italy reported 38,375 COVID-19 related cases on Saturday, against 40,948 the day before, the health ministry said, while the number of deaths rose to 210 from 193.
* The Bangladeshi government has decided to extend the ongoing special campaign to administer the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine by two days to Feb. 28 amid a rising demand, Health Minister Zahid Maleque has said.
* The death toll from flash flooding in Australia's northeast rose to seven on Sunday as a severe storm system pummelled the city of Brisbane and the southeast of the state of Queensland.
