* Haiti will hold the first round of presidential and legislative elections on Dec. 13, the Caribbean country's Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) said Monday.
* Guinean President Mamady Doumbouya on Monday carried out a partial cabinet reshuffle, bringing five new ministers, including two women, into the government while retaining Prime Minister Amadou Oury Bah in his post, according to a presidential decree released by state media.
* Kiev's attacks targeting Russian civilians killed 86 people between July 15 and 24, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Monday.
* Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a presidential decree to boost the number of servicemen in the Russian Armed Forces by 25,000, according to information published Monday on the official portal for legal acts.
* The conflict in Ukraine continues to intensify, and the suffering of civilians is worsening, a Chinese envoy said on Monday, calling on all parties concerned to make every effort to de-escalate the situation in order to preserve the prospects for an early peace.
* Japan's potential introduction of nuclear weapons into its accelerating process of remilitarization would pose threats to Russia's national security and undermine the stability in the entire region, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Monday.
* UN humanitarians on Monday sounded the alarm over escalating violence across the occupied West Bank in recent days.
* U.S. President Donald Trump said Monday that he decided to pause U.S. strikes on Iran in order to give negotiations another chance, while warning that he could order a restart of strikes if talks with Iran fail.
* Australian Treasurer Jim Chalmers on Tuesday warned that recent escalations of the conflict in the Middle East pose a substantial threat to global inflation.
* The U.S. State Department said on Monday that Israel and Lebanon will hold the next round of talks in Rome, Italy, on Aug. 4-6.
* Iraqi Prime Minister and Commander-in-Chief of the Iraqi Armed Forces Ali al-Zaidi on Monday directed security authorities to investigate the alleged drone attacks launched from Iraqi territory on Saudi Arabia, the Iraqi military said.
* UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said on Monday that Israeli military operations in Lebanon have caused widespread civilian suffering and may amount to "war crimes."
* Yemen's Houthi group said on Monday that it had launched drone strikes on facilities involved in transporting crude oil from eastern Saudi Arabia to the Red Sea port of Yanbu, saying the operations were in response to alleged Saudi drone incursions into Yemeni airspace.
* Canada on Monday opened a new international bridge linking Windsor, Ontario and Detroit, U.S., providing the newest and largest land border crossing with the United States despite escalating trade tensions between the two countries.
* Unidentified armed men attacked and killed the provincial director for the Information and Culture Department of Badakhshan province in northern Afghanistan on Tuesday, provincial police spokesman Ehsanullah Kamgar confirmed in a statement.
* Singapore recorded 29,864 live births in 2025, down 11.4 percent from 2024, while registered deaths rose marginally by 0.2 percent to 26,499, the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority said on Monday.
* Cambodia's banking and financial institutions recorded modest credit growth in the first half of 2026, primarily slowed by a sluggish recovery in the construction and real estate sectors, according to the National Bank of Cambodia (NBC) biannual report released Tuesday.
* Wildfires continued to rage across central Spain on Sunday, with the blaze in Avila province becoming the largest on record in the country's history after burning around 50,000 hectares, according to authorities.
* An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 7.1 struck Kumamoto Prefecture, southwestern Japan, on Tuesday, the Japan Meteorological Agency said. A tsunami warning of one meter has been issued for the Ariake Sea and Yatsushiro Sea in southwestern Japan.
* Extreme weather brought about by the El Niño phenomenon could drive up electricity consumption as hotter weather further increases energy demand, particularly from households, with the use of cooling equipment rising, Malaysian Economy Minister Akmal Nasrullah Mohd Nasir has warned.
