* Germany has approved the export of Leopard 1 battle tanks to Ukraine from industry stocks, a government spokesperson confirmed on Friday at a regular news conference in Berlin.
* Turkey said on Friday that Western nations, including the United States and Germany, had not given it any information to back up their assertions that security threats had prompted them to close their missions in the country.
* European Union proposals on green subsidies "can and must" be improved, especially in terms of funding, Italy's Industry Minister Adolfo Urso said on Friday, ahead of talks with EU peers.
* Morocco and Spain on Thursday signed 20 agreements to advance their joint efforts to combat illegal immigration and their cooperation in the areas of investment, education and training.
* China will continue to lift restrictions on travel between the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions (SARs), China's State Council Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office said on Friday, citing a document.
* In the wake of the recent deadly suicide bombing in Pakistan's northwest Peshawar city of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif on Friday called for national unity to fight the menace of terrorism.
* US job growth accelerated sharply in January while the unemployment rate hit a more than 53-1/2-year low of 3.4%, pointing to a persistently tight labor market, and a potential headache for Federal Reserve officials as they fight inflation.
* The European Central Bank (ECB) on Thursday increased interest rates by 50 basis points (bps) and sent out a dovish message about the outlook for future rate hikes.
* Over 12.58 billion Indian rupees (153.4 million USD) will be incurred on meeting expenses for running different federal ministries and departments during the 2023-24 fiscal year in India.
* Ukraine on Thursday signed an agreement to join the European Union's Single Market Programme with a budget of 4.2 billion euros (about 4.59 billion USD), the government press service reported.
* Egypt's tourism revenues rose by 43.5 percent to a record high of 4.1 billion USD in the first quarter of the fiscal year 2022-2023, which runs from July to September last year, the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) said in a statement on Thursday.
* Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said on Friday the International Monetary Fund was giving his country a "tough time" over unlocking stalled funding from a $6.5 billion bailout at a time of "unimaginable" economic crisis.
* UN special envoy for Iraq, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, on Thursday called on Iraq's political class to take advantage of the present climate to end chronic cycles of instability.
* The rapid loss of the world's wetlands must urgently be reversed by restoring vital ecosystems, the head of the Convention on Wetlands said here on Thursday.
* More than 3.5 million children do not have access to school due to the impacts of conflict and climate shocks across Ethiopia, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has said.
* A group of overseas private creditors is ready to hold debt restructuring talks with Sri Lanka consistent with the International Monetary Fund's programme, their legal adviser said on Friday.
* Peru's state energy agency PeruPetro is offering areas for oil and gas exploration through direct negotiations with interested companies and up to 31 separate technical contracts, hoping to boost the nation's reserves, officials said on Thursday.
* Drought in Uruguay has had a "direct impact" on farming production, causing about 1.17 billion USD in losses or 1.9 percent of the country's GDP, the country's agriculture ministry said.
