* Singapore has established a committee to review the country's electoral boundaries in preparation for its next general election, which must be held by November 2025, though the exact date has yet to be set.
* The Belarusian Central Election Commission (CEC) said Tuesday 7.81 percent of eligible voters cast their ballots on the first of early voting in the presidential elections.
* Chad's ruling party, Patriotic Salvation Movement, won a sweeping victory in the legislative elections held last month, securing 124 seats out of 188, according to final results released by the country's Constitutional Council on Tuesday.
* Speaking with Russian President Vladimir Putin in a video meeting on Tuesday, Chinese President Xi Jinping said he is willing to work with his counterpart to continue guiding bilateral relations towards a new height in the new year.
* U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced a 500-billion-USD investment from OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle in artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure in the United States.
* Cambodia and Timor-Leste have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on cooperation in the fields of post, telecommunications, information and communications technology (ICT), and digital transformation, said a joint press release on Tuesday.
* Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum on Tuesday pledged to defend the country's independence and sovereignty in the wake of U.S. President Donald Trump's executive order to change the name of Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America.
* Germany's Vice Chancellor and Minister of Economics Robert Habeck has warned that Germany is prepared to impose retaliatory tariffs if the United States proceeds with new import duties on German products.
* The World Health Organization (WHO) has expressed regret over U.S. President Donald Trump's announcement of withdrawing the country from the organization. It hopes the U.S. government will reconsider this decision.
* Kazakhstan is set to establish a venture capital fund with a target size of 1 billion USD to support information technology (IT) projects, according to the country's Minister of Digital Development, Innovations, and Aerospace Industry Zhaslan Madiyev.
* A recent bill approved by the Armenian government to initiate the country's European Union (EU) accession process does not specify any concrete timelines, Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan said on Tuesday.
* UN humanitarians said on Tuesday a surge of humanitarian aid continues to enter the Gaza Strip, with leading priorities including healthcare, food, water, and shelter, as well as opening bakeries and aiding family reunifications.
* Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, discussed on Tuesday over phone regional developments, especially the situation in the Gaza Strip.
* Iran on Tuesday launched a military drill involving border guards from three northwestern provinces of Ardabil, East Azarbaijan, and West Azarbaijan, the official news agency IRNA reported.
* The Iraqi Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday that Iraq welcomes Britain's decision to downgrade its security classification, which reflects the improved security situation in the country,
* Iraq will take part in Lebanon's reconstruction efforts following the damage caused by the Hezbollah-Israel conflict, Iraqi Undersecretary of the Ministry of Commerce Sattar Al-Jabri said in Lebanon on Tuesday.
* Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday declared a national day of mourning for Wednesday following the death of 66 people in a fire that broke out at a popular ski resort in northwestern Bolu province.
* A Qatari Armed Forces plane carrying 28 tons of humanitarian aid, including essential food supplies, landed in the Syrian capital of Damascus on Tuesday, the Qatari Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
* The army of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) on Tuesday called on citizens to remain calm in the face of recent advances by the March 23 Movement (M23) rebels in the eastern province of North Kivu.
* A total of 20 Ethiopian migrants, including nine women and 11 men, were killed when their boat from Djibouti capsized off southern Yemeni coast over the weekend, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) reported on Tuesday.
* The United States saw 27 individual weather and climate disasters in 2024 with at least 1 billion USD in damage, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
* Statistics Canada on Tuesday said the country's population could double in the coming 50 years.
* Russia's budget deficit in 2024 amounted to approximately 1.7 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), or 3.485 trillion rubles (34.5 billion USD), the Russian Ministry of Finance announced on Tuesday.
* China recorded a total of 5.615 billion domestic travel trips in 2024, marking a 14.8-percent increase from the previous year, according to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism on Wednesday.
* Indonesia's Business Competition Supervisory Commission (KPPU) has found U.S. tech giant Google LLC guilty of monopolistic practices in the Google Play Store and ordered the company to pay a fine of 202.5 billion rupiahs (around 12 million USD).
* Cambodia earned 666.2 million USD in revenue from exports of natural rubber latex in 2024, up 35.4 percent from 492 million dollars in the year before, said a General Directorate of Rubber report on Wednesday.
* New Zealand's Consumers Price Index (CPI) increased 2.2 percent year-on-year in the fourth quarter of 2024, following a 2.2 percent annual increase in the third quarter of 2024, both being slower increases, according to the statistics department Stats NZ on Wednesday.
* Canada's Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 1.8 percent on a year-over-year basis in December, down from a 1.9 percent increase in November, Statistics Canada said on Tuesday.
* Malaysia's annual inflation rate for 2024 recorded 1.8 percent, marking a two-year consecutive decline in inflation since 2022, official data showed Wednesday.
* Myanmar exported over 1.5 million tons of pulses between April and December of the 2024-2025 fiscal year, state-run daily The Global New Light of Myanmar reported on Wednesday.
* Israel's public debt-to-gross domestic product (GDP) ratio reached 69 percent in 2024, compared to 61.3 percent in 2023, the country's Finance Ministry said Tuesday in a statement. This is the second-highest public debt-to-GDP ratio since 2010, when the figure was 69.3 percent, the ministry said.
* Cyprus achieved a new tourism milestone in 2024, attracting visitors numbering four times its population of just under one million, Deputy Minister for Tourism Costas Koumis announced on Tuesday.
