* Egypt's new cabinet has been sworn in before Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi at the Al-Ittihadiya Palace in the Egyptian capital Cairo on Wednesday, the state-run Nile TV reported. The new cabinet is headed by Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly, who has been in the post since 2018.
* Romania's ruling coalition of Social Democrats and Liberals has agreed to hold a presidential election on Nov. 24 and Dec. 8, with parliamentary polls in between, they said on Thursday.
* Millions in Britain began to cast their votes in the general election on Thursday, as around 40,000 polling stations across the country opened at 7 a.m. local time (0600 GMT).
* Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Wednesday announced the appointment of Lt. Gen. Jennie Carignan as the first woman to lead the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF).
* A senior official from the South Africa's African National Congress (ANC) said Wednesday that the priority of the newly-formed coalition government would be the economic growth and job creation.
* The 24th Meeting of the Council of Heads of State of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) kicked off Thursday in Astana, with Belarus officially becoming a member of the association.
* China on Thursday took over the rotating presidency of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).
* In a major step aimed at bolstering connectivity and cooperation, visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping and Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev on Wednesday attended the opening ceremonies of one transportation project and several cultural exchange facilities.
* Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday met Mohammad Mokhber, the interim president of Iran, on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan.
* India's Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar met his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi on Thursday in Kazakhstan where the two agreed to step up talks to resolve issues along their border at the earliest, New Delhi said in a statement.
* Senior U.S. and Venezuelan officials restarted talks on Wednesday, with Washington saying it urged President Nicolas Maduro's government to ensure that elections scheduled for July 28 will be "competitive and inclusive."
* Russia's S-350 Vityaz surface-to-air missile system has effectively intercepted Western missiles in the ongoing special military operation, TASS news agency quoted the Russian Ministry of Defense on Thursday.
* Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will on Thursday evening convene a meeting of his security cabinet to discuss proposals from Hamas about a possible ceasefire deal in Gaza, a source in Netanyahu's office said.
* Hamas said on Wednesday its leader Ismail Haniyeh conducted calls with Qatari and Egyptian mediators around ideas to reach a deal to end the war in Gaza.
* Lebanon's Hezbollah said on Thursday it launched more than 200 rockets and a swarm of drones at 10 Israeli military sites in response to the killing of one of the Iran-aligned group's top commanders in southern Lebanon on Wednesday.
* The United Nations Special Envoy for Yemen Hans Grundberg announced on Wednesday that negotiations between the Yemeni government and the Houthi group have achieved significant progress regarding the release of conflict-related detainees, including a prominent Yemeni politician.
* The clashes between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have recently escalated on multiple fronts across Sudan, notably in Sinnar, West Kordofan and North Darfur states.
* Some 66.7 million people in the Greater Horn of Africa region are highly food insecure, according to a new report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) released on Wednesday.
* The second edition of the African conference on the blue economy started in the Kenyan coastal town of Kwale Wednesday, focusing on strategies to boost investments in the sector of the continent.
* China is facing hotter and longer heatwaves and more frequent and unpredictable heavy rain as a result of climate change, the weather bureau warned on Thursday, as the world's second biggest economy braces for another scorching summer.
* India's solar power generation grew at the slowest pace in six years in the first half of 2024, an analysis of data from the federal grid regulator showed, as the country further stepped up reliance on coal to address surging power demand.
* China's service trade continued to experience rapid growth in the first five months of 2024, with value up 16 percent year on year, with stellar growth in travel services, the Ministry of Commerce said Thursday.
* U.S. Federal Reserve officials said "additional favorable data" were required to give them greater confidence that inflation was moving sustainably toward 2 percent, according to minutes of the Fed's latest meeting released on Wednesday.
* Mongolia has been reclassified by the World Bank from a lower-middle income country to an upper-middle income country for the 2024 fiscal year, announced the country's Finance Ministry on Wednesday.
* Thailand's economic growth is projected to be 2.4 percent in 2024, down from the 2.8 percent forecast in April, mainly due to weaker-than-expected exports and contracted public investment earlier this year, the World Bank said on Wednesday.
* The number of jobless people in Slovenia fell to 43,369 by the end of June, which is the lowest level since the country's independence in 1991, the national Employment Service said on Wednesday.
* The National Bank of Poland (NBP) on Wednesday decided to keep interest rates unchanged.
* At least 180 people have died from weeks of record flooding in southern Brazil's Rio Grande do Sul state and 32 people remain missing, the civil defense agency said Wednesday.
* German biotech firm CureVac said on Wednesday that it is selling the rights to its mRNA influenza and COVID-19 vaccines to British pharmaceutical group GSK for up to 1.45 billion euros (1.56 billion USD) as part of a group restructuring.
