* The campaign season in Venezuela officially started on Thursday ahead of the July 28 presidential elections, according to the National Electoral Council.
* Voting started in a presidential runoff in Iran early Friday, in which reformist Masoud Pezeshkian and principlist Saeed Jalili race for the presidency, Iranian Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi announced.
* Cameroon's Minister of Territorial Administration Paul Atanga Nji said on Thursday that the government will "not tolerate" any pre-election disorder in the country.
* The ministers of Egypt's new government held their first cabinet meeting on Thursday with a focus on resolving the summer daily power cuts implemented by the government due to a fuel shortage, the Egyptian cabinet said.
* Laos and Kazakhstan have signed an agreement on the exemption of visa requirements for diplomatic and official passport holders.
* Leaders of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) members called on Thursday for the building of a multipolar world to address pressing security risks and challenges.
* In his address at the meeting of the Council of Heads of State of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Kazakhstan on Thursday, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif called for collective action under the SCO platform for socio-economic development.
* Russia is ready to start producing short- and medium-range missiles in response to U.S. actions, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday.
* A Europe-China tourism dialogue opened in Budapest on Thursday, aiming to speed up the recovery of tourism between the two sides.
* Pakistan has outrightly rejected the U.S. State Department's report on religious freedom, saying that unilateral reports assessing other countries' human rights situations are not free from political bias and present an incomplete and distorted picture.
* Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu approved the dispatch of a delegation for negotiations on a ceasefire deal with Hamas in Gaza and the release of hostages, a senior Israeli official told Xinhua on Thursday.
* Warplanes of the U.S.-British coalition launched three airstrikes against Houthi targets in Yemen's Red Sea province of Hodeidah on Thursday, according to the Houthi-run al-Masirah TV and witnesses.
* Mauritanian coast guards recovered the bodies of 89 illegal migrants near N'Diago, southwestern Mauritania, local media reported Thursday.
* At least 25 people drowned while fleeing the ongoing military clashes in the Sinnar State in central Sudan after their wooden boat capsized, local resistance committees announced on Thursday.
* The Southern African Development Community Mission in Mozambique (SAMIM) on Thursday announced its decision to withdraw forces from the northern province of Cabo Delgado, marking the end of its peacekeeping mission in the region.
* The Greater Horn of Africa region needs some 9.8 billion USD for humanitarian assistance, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in an analysis Thursday.
* The Global Environment Facility (GEF) grants 5 million USD to the Sri Lankan Ministry of Environment and United Nations Development Program (UNDP) to implement a project on chemical disposal in the country, the UNDP said in a statement on Thursday.
* Cambodia attracted fixed-asset investment of 3.25 billion USD in the first half (H1) of 2024, surging 195 percent from 1.1 billion dollars in the same period last year, said a Council for the Development of Cambodia (CDC)'s report released on Friday.
* Foreign direct investment (FDI) in South Korea logged a double-digit fall in the first half (H1) of this year after hitting a record high a year earlier, government data showed Friday.
* The Philippines' annual inflation rate eased to 3.7 percent in June from 3.9 percent in May as energy and transport costs dipped, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) said on Friday.
* Incoming orders in Germany's manufacturing sector fell by 1.6 percent in May compared to the previous month, according to preliminary figures published by the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) on Thursday. This marked the fifth consecutive decline.
* Retail sales in Singapore increased 2.2 percent year-on-year in May, compared to a 1.2 percent decline in April, according to data released by the Department of Statistics on Friday.
* Australia's competition regulator released its latest gas inquiry report on Friday, indicating that the country's east coast market is likely to struggle with a risk of a shortfall in the winter of 2025.
* Tourism remains Fiji's growth driver and the country expects 1 million visitors to arrive this year, said Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Tourism Viliame Gavoka on Thursday at a tourism summit held in Nadi, Fiji's third largest city.
* The number of foreign tourists visiting Israel dropped by 74.9 percent in the first half of 2024 compared to the same period last year, according to the statistics issued by Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics on Thursday.
* The number of foreign tourist arrivals in Kenya for 2024 is expected to reach 3 million, up from 2 million posted in 2023, Alfred Mutua, cabinet secretary for the Ministry of Tourism and Wildlife, has said.
* Lithuania is purchasing various types of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for a total of 36 million euros (38.92 million USD), according to Lithuania's Ministry of National Defense.
* Zimbabwe on Thursday received a total of 31.8 million USD in drought insurance payout from the African Risk Capacity (ARC) Group to help alleviate the effects of the El Nino-induced drought.
* Hurricane Beryl restrengthened to a Category 3 storm late Thursday and is heading towards Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, a tourism hotspot in the country, after leaving a trail of destruction across the eastern Caribbean.
* Floods and geological disasters triggered by recent heavy rainfall in east China's Jiangxi Province had impacted over 1.56 million people by Thursday evening, according to statistics revealed by local authorities.
* At least 28,000 people are under evacuation orders as a fast-moving wildfire continued to burn on Thursday in Northern California amid severe heat wave.
* Wild poliovirus type 1 has been detected in sewage samples from two new districts in Pakistan along with the six previously infected districts of three provinces, the Pakistani Health Ministry said Thursday.
