* Cape Verdean President Jose Maria Neves presided over the swearing-in ceremony of four new ministers on Friday in Praia, after their appointments earlier this week amid a cabinet reshuffle.
* China's Ministry of Transport (MOT) has urged efforts to expedite the development of standards for road and air collaboration in low-altitude transport and artificial intelligence (AI), highlighting these areas as key priorities for 2025.
* Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet will pay an official visit to the Philippines from Monday to Tuesday, according to the Cambodian Foreign Ministry on Saturday.
* Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Friday U.S. President Donald Trump's threat to annex Canada "is a real thing," local media reported.
* U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday that he is ending former President Joe Biden's security clearances and stopping his daily intelligence briefings.
* The Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) has launched a strategy to ensure a stable water supply for households, farmers and local businesses in the region, Malta's Environment Ministry said in a statement on Friday.
* Slovenian President Natasa Pirc Musar said on Friday that U.S. sanctions against the International Criminal Court (ICC) undermine the foundations of international criminal law.
* Ukraine is working on launching the transit of natural gas from Azerbaijan to Europe, the European Pravda media outlet reported Friday, citing Heorhiy Tykhyi, the spokesman for the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry.
* An exercise to step up national preparedness for the protection of underwater infrastructure was held in the Baltic Sea this week.
* Over 18,000 Afghan refugees have returned to their homeland from neighboring Pakistan last month, the local media Tolo news reported on Saturday.
* Hamas on Friday accused Israel of deliberately delaying the implementation of the Gaza ceasefire agreement by disturbing the delivery of humanitarian aid and relief to the enclave.
* Israel released 183 Palestinian prisoners on Saturday in the fifth prisoner-for-hostage swap under the first phase of a ceasefire agreement between Hamas and Israel.
* Iraqi President Abdul Latif Rashid and Jordanian King Abdullah II reaffirmed Friday their unwavering commitment to the Palestinian cause.
* The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said Friday that Somalia is hosting 41,765 registered refugees and asylum seekers as of December 2024.
* U.S. employers added 143,000 jobs in January amid slowing job growth, with the unemployment rate edging down to 4.0 percent, the U.S. Labor Department reported Friday.
* Cambodia's international reserves increased to 22.5 billion USD in 2024, representing a year-on-year rise of 12.6 percent, the National Bank of Cambodia's Governor Chea Serey said on Saturday.
* Kazakhstan finalized more than 100 investment agreements amounting to nearly three trillion tenge (about 5.8 billion USD) in 2024, Kazakh First Deputy Prime Minister Roman Sklyar said at an investment forum on Friday, the country's Kazinform news agency reported.
* Uzbekistan plans to increase its service exports to 8.5 billion USD this year, the Uzbek president's press service said in a statement on Friday.
* Czechia welcomed approximately 22.8 million tourists in 2024, surpassing pre-pandemic levels for the first time, according to a press release issued by the Czech Statistical Office (CSO) on Friday.
* South Sudan on Friday confirmed its first mpox case, with authorities pledging heightened vigilance to prevent further transmission.
* During his visit to Santorini on Friday, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis urged the residents to remain calm in the face of a series of earthquakes that had shaken the island since last week.
* The U.S. Coast Guard said Friday it found a crashed plane matching the description of the aircraft carrying 10 people that went missing along Alaska's western coast Thursday afternoon.
* Major flood warnings have again been issued for Australia's northeast as torrential rain returns to the region. The Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) on Saturday issued widespread major and minor flood warnings for towns along a 300-km stretch off coast in the North Tropical Coast region in the state of Queensland.
