* Spain's Catalonia region will hold an early election on May 12 after the regional parliament rejected the separatist minority government's budget proposal, Catalan government head Pere Aragones said on Wednesday.
* Nepali Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal on Wednesday won a vote of confidence in the House of Representatives, days after he forged a new five-party coalition government.
* The top leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) on Wednesday guided a training match between the tankmen large combined units of the Korean People's Army (KPA), state media said Thursday, as he has been seen in several military training events of the country's armed forces thus far this month.
* China and NATO held an eighth military staff dialogue on security policy in Beijing on Wednesday, according to a statement from the Chinese defence ministry.
* Police in the Indian capital put up barricades, stepped up security and warned of traffic congestion on Thursday as thousands of protesting farmers were due to arrive for a rally in support of their demand for higher crop prices.
* The Kremlin said on Thursday that comments made by Russian President Vladimir Putin in an interview to state media did not constitute a threat to use them. Putin told the West on Wednesday that Russia was technically ready for nuclear war and that if the U.S. sent troops to Ukraine, it would be considered a significant escalation of the conflict.
* China's foreign minister, Wang Yi, will visit Australia and New Zealand from March 17 to 21, a spokesperson said on Thursday at a regular press briefing.
* U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will visit the Republic of Korea next week and hold a meeting on Monday with his counterpart, Cho Tae-yul, the foreign ministry in Seoul said on Thursday.
* Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. will meet U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on March 19 to tackle cooperation and security matters, the office of the Manila leader said in a statement late on Wednesday night.
* Austria has declared two diplomats from the Russian embassy personae non gratae for actions incompatible with their diplomatic status, ordering them to leave Austria within a week, Austria's Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Wednesday.
* International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi said he had discussed Iran's nuclear programme with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russian state-owned news agency TASS reported on Thursday.
* Norway plans to raise its defence spending to a level equal to 2% of gross domestic product this year, Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere said on Thursday.
* The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill on Wednesday that would give TikTok's Chinese owner ByteDance about six months to divest the U.S. assets of the short-video app, or face a ban, in the greatest threat to the app since the Trump administration.
* Indonesian President Joko Widodo convened a special meeting on Wednesday with Vice President Ma'ruf Amin, representatives from the Public Works and Housing Ministry, the Nusantara Capital City Authority, and other relevant staff members to discuss expediting the development of the country's new capital.
* Haiti's capital was calm on Wednesday, two days after the prime minister said he would step down, but the United States and the United Nations began to withdraw staff in a sign they fear peace might not hold.
* Venezuelan authorities have thwarted a new plot to assassinate President Nicolas Maduro and overthrow the government, Attorney General Tarek William Saab said Wednesday.
* The number of children who died before the age of five globally reached a historic low of 4.9 million in 2022, according to the latest estimates released on Wednesday by the United Nations (UN) Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation.
* Senior Turkish officials will discuss security issues, particularly Turkey's operations against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in Iraq, with their counterparts in Baghdad on Thursday, a Turkish defence ministry official said.
* At least 31,341 Palestinians have been killed and 73,134 wounded since Oct. 7 in Israel's military offensive on the Gaza Strip, the enclave's health ministry said on Thursday.
* The German Armed Forces will participate in an airlift of humanitarian aid for Gaza, and the deployment of aid could begin as early as the end of the week, Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius said on Wednesday.
* Algerian Foreign Minister Ahmed Attaf, and the European Union's Special Representative for the Middle East Peace Process Sven Koopmans, discussed in Algiers on Wednesday efforts to achieve a ceasefire and facilitate humanitarian actions in the Gaza Strip, said a statement by the Algerian Foreign Ministry.
* Iran's Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian warned that Israel's continued killing of Palestinians and siege of Gaza had sounded the alarm about an "unprecedented humanitarian disaster" of the century, according to a statement released by the Iranian Foreign Ministry on Wednesday.
* Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Wednesday said Israel will not be able to eliminate Hamas even if it enters Rafah, local TV channel al-Manar reported.
* Warplanes of the U.S.-British naval coalition on Wednesday conducted four airstrikes on port city Hodeidah's airport in western Yemen, the Houthi-run al-Masirah TV reported.
* By building a "security corridor" along the southern borders, Türkiye is successfully walling itself off from terrorism, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday.
* Nigeria on Wednesday opened its land and air borders with the Republic of the Niger and lifted earlier imposed sanctions against that country following a 2023 coup that overthrew President Mohamed Bazoum.
* Nigerian President Bola Tinubu has taken a firm stance against paying ransom for the release of recently abducted schoolchildren and women, according to an official announcement Wednesday.
* About 6,500 illegally acquired guns have been surrendered by members of the public in Zambia following the introduction of a firearms amnesty exercise in 2011, a senior government official said Wednesday.
* As of Tuesday, the China-Laos Railway had handled a total of 30.2 million passenger trips since its launch in December 2021, data from the China State Railway Group Co., Ltd. showed Thursday.
* Russian energy giant Gazprom GAZP.MM said it would send 42.4 million cubic metres (mcm) of natural gas to Europe via Ukraine on Thursday, the same volume as the day before.
* The European Parliament on Wednesday approved the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Act with an overwhelming majority in Strasbourg, France. The Parliament passed the act with 523 lawmakers voting in favor, 46 against and 49 abstentions.
* Italy encountered a record of more than 1,400 cyberattacks last year, a government cabinet official said on Wednesday.
* Singapore's total employment grew 88,400 in 2023, including 83,500 for non-residents and 4,900 for residents, according to a labor market report released by the Ministry of Manpower Thursday.
* U.S. crude oil imports and exports decreased during the week ending March 8, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said in a report released on Wednesday.
* The Israeli parliament on Wednesday approved a revised state budget for 2024 to fund the country's war against Hamas in Gaza. According to the Finance Ministry, the updated budget stands at about 584 billion shekels (about 161 billion USD), an increase of 70 billion shekels compared to the original budget approved in May last year.
* The International Monetary Fund (IMF) will hold a second and last review of Pakistan's $3 billion stand-by arrangement (SBA) this week, the finance ministry and the IMF said on Wednesday, during which the South Asian nation will ask for a new longer-term bailout.
* Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe stressed the need to expand the tourism industry beyond coastal areas to strengthen the country's economy, according to a statement from the President's Media Division (PMD) on Thursday.
* Melting snow and ice could cause flooding in Mongolia as spring nears, the country's State Emergency Commission (SEC) said Thursday.
* The Yemeni government announced on Wednesday that more than 6,000 displaced families in the country's northeastern province of Marib have been largely impacted by heavy rains and flooding over the past five days, the Saba news agency reported.
