* Denmark, Greece, Pakistan, Panama, and Somalia were elected non-permanent members of the UN Security Council on Thursday for a two-year term. The newly elected members will take up their new responsibilities on Jan. 1, 2025, and serve till Dec. 31, 2026.
* South Africa's African National Congress will invite other political parties to form a national unity government, its leader President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Thursday, after failing to win the majority in last week’s election.
* In a sombre ceremony held Thursday at the UN headquarters in New York, the world body remembered and honoured the 188 personnel who lost their lives in the line of duty in 2023.
* U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned on Thursday an Israeli air strike on a U.N. school in the Gaza Strip, where some 6,000 displaced people were sheltering, U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said in a statement.
* Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that the idea of moving the headquarters of major companies to regions outside Moscow deserved attention, and called for better professional education to help alleviate a labour shortage.
* China's President Xi Jinping met Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif in Beijing on Friday, Chinese state media reported, days before Pakistan presents its annual budget and applies for a new International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan.
* Fijian Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka and his New Zealand counterpart Christopher Luxon have pledged to bolster efforts to combat the growing drug trafficking problem in the Pacific region.
* The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said in Helsinki on Thursday that NATO has no plans to deploy forces to Ukraine.
* The United States should negotiate deportations of undocumented migrants directly with the third countries they come from, including Cuba and Venezuela, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Thursday.
* France plans to provide Mirage 2000 warplanes to Ukraine, President Emmanuel Macron told French TV stations on Thursday.
* Ukraine has held maritime drills in the Black Sea, the Ukrainian Navy said in a statement on Friday. Amphibious landing, maneuvering and landing of personnel on an unequipped coast were the main exercises, the statement said.
* Nigerian President Bola Tinubu on Thursday called for international development financiers to see the African continent as a destination for growth and prosperity, urging for more strategic investments in agriculture, infrastructure, research, and development.
* The Southern African Development Community (SADC) members have an obligation to accelerate policies aimed at protecting the environment, an SADC official said Thursday.
* Russia and China, which hold veto powers in the U.N. Security Council, raised concerns on Thursday with a U.S. draft resolution that would back a proposal - outlined by President Joe Biden - for a ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian militants Hamas.
* Qatari foreign ministry spokesperson Majed Al-Ansari said on Thursday that Hamas has not yet handed mediators its response to the latest ceasefire proposal and is still studying it, adding that Qatari, Egyptian and the U.S. mediators are still making efforts.
* Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he will "present the truth" about the war against Hamas in Gaza when he addresses the U.S. Congress on July 24 during a visit to Washington, Republican leaders said on Thursday.
* With a renewed ceasefire push in the eight-month-old Gaza war stalled, Israel bombarded central and southern areas again on Friday, killing at least 28 Palestinians, and tank forces advanced to the western edges of Rafah.
* Iraq is ready to provide all forms of support to the Palestinian people despite the challenges and obstacles hindering the delivery of food and humanitarian aid, said Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia' al-Sudani on Thursday.
* The UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) said Thursday it has stepped up efforts to maintain peace in Malakal town, Upper Nile State, following the death of several people last week due to violence.
* Just over 170,000 migrants crossed the perilous Darien Gap that connects Panama to Colombia over the first five months of this year, Panama's migration agency said on Thursday, suggesting 2024 could again break records.
* The U.S. military said on Thursday it had destroyed eight Houthi drones and two uncrewed surface vessels in the Red Sea in the past 24 hours.
* China's total goods imports and exports expanded 6.3 percent year on year in yuan terms in the first five months of this year, official data showed Friday.
* The U.S. economy created far more jobs than expected in May and annual wage growth reaccelerated, underscoring the resilience of the labor market and reducing the likelihood the Federal Reserve will be able to start rate cuts in September.
* The European Central Bank went ahead with its first interest rate cut since 2019 on Thursday, keeping its word despite an increasingly uncertain inflation outlook.
* The Italian economy is expected to grow by 1 percent this year, the country's National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) said on Thursday, revising up a previous 0.7 percent projection.
* Argentine President Javier Milei said on Thursday that his country's economic activity "has already begun to rebound."
* The Bangladeshi government on Thursday unveiled a record 7.97-trillion-taka (68 billion USD) national budget for the 2024-25 fiscal year starting in July. The government projected an economic growth of 6.75 percent in the annual budget.
* The International Monetary Fund said on Thursday that it reached a staff-level agreement with Egypt on the third review of an expanded IMF loan program, which would disburse about $820 million to Cairo upon board approval.
* Boeing's Starliner spacecraft docked to the International Space Station (ISS) on Thursday, about 27 hours after liftoff from the U.S. state of Florida.
* A fifth poultry farm near Melbourne has been infected with a highly pathogenic H7 strain of avian influenza, the government of Australia's Victoria state said on Wednesday.
