* The first meeting of the Nuclear Consultative Group (NCG) between South Korea and the United States will take place on July 18 in Seoul, South Korea's presidential office said on Saturday.
* Russia has requested a new meeting of the U.N. Security Council for July 11 to discuss last September's explosions on the Nord Stream gas pipelines, a senior Russian diplomat at the United Nations said on Saturday.
* Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday called for extending the Black Sea Grain Initiative which expires on July 17.
* Russia has condemned the U.S. decision to supply cluster munitions to Ukraine as a path to genocide and a threat to world peace, Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported on Friday.
* Poland began moving over 1,000 troops to the east of the country on Saturday, the defence minister said, amid rising concern in the NATO-member that the presence of Wagner Group fighters in Belarus could lead to increased tension on its border.
* NATO has turned Vilnius into a fortress defended by advanced weaponry to protect U.S. President Joe Biden and other alliance leaders meeting next week only 32 km (20 miles) from Lithuania's razor-wire topped border fence with Russian ally Belarus.
* Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu has inspected troops and overseen training of newly formed units made up of contracted servicemen, his ministry said on Saturday.
* As the United States has destroyed the last batch of its declared chemical weapons, all declared chemical weapons of all States Parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) had been destroyed, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) announced on Friday.
* Paris police banned a planned protest on Saturday against violence by the force, a week after France was rocked by riots sparked by the killing of a teenager in a suburb of the French capital.
* UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Friday welcomed the adoption of a revised strategy by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from international shipping, and asked for follow-up measures.
* The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) excluded "any visible indications of mines or explosives" at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (ZNPP) in Ukraine, the nuclear watchdog's chief said on Friday.
* UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres stands by his condemnation of Israel for the excessive use of force in Jenin, said his deputy spokesman on Friday.
* African Integration Day was marked on Friday with the call for African Union (AU) members to accelerate job creation, digital and financial inclusion as they strive to realize the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).
* Iranian Foreign Minister said Saturday that his country and Sudan have agreed to resume bilateral relations in the near future.
* The International Monetary Fund (IMF) said Friday that its executive board has completed the second review of a three-year loan program for Mozambique, which greenlights an immediate disbursement to Maputo of about 60.6 million USD.
* Russian grain exports hit a record of 60 million tons in the agricultural year of 2022-2023 (July 1, 2022 - June 30, 2023), Russian Minister of Agriculture Dmitry Patrushev said Friday.
* The Philippines' gross international reserves (GIR) level settled at 99.8 billion USD as of end-June from 100.6 billion dollars in May, according to the preliminary data released by the Philippine central bank on Friday.
* Japan's weather agency said on Saturday that an active rain front hovering over the country's main island of Honshu is bringing rain clouds to areas between western and northern Japan, especially on the Sea of Japan coast.
* Sixty-seven people were killed and 125 others injured in separate rain-related accidents in Pakistan since the start of the pre-monsoon season in the country, the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) of Pakistan said on Saturday.
