* Canada's ruling Liberal Party leader Mark Carney was sworn in as the 24th prime minister of the country and appointed a new cabinet on Friday. The 24-member transition cabinet includes the main players who held portfolios central to managing Canada-U.S. relationship.
* Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis reshuffled the cabinet on Friday, triggering mixed reactions from opposition parties, business representatives, and the media.
* Indonesia aims to eradicate extreme poverty by 2026, accelerating efforts to meet this target, Coordinating Minister for Community Empowerment Abdul Muhaimin Iskandar said on Friday.
* U.S. Senate on Friday approved a stopgap bill that will keep government funding at current levels until September just hours before current funding is set to expire, averting a government shutdown.
* China will host the first meeting of International Military Cooperation Organs of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Member States for 2025 on March 26 and 27, a defense spokesperson said Friday.
* Prime Minister Christopher Luxon on Saturday called on New Zealanders to continue confronting the forces that led to the 2019 Christchurch mosque attacks, stressing that there was no place for Islamophobia in New Zealand.
* U.S. President Donald Trump said on social media Friday that his administration "had very good and productive discussions with President Vladimir Putin of Russia yesterday," and there is a very good chance that "this horrible, bloody war" can finally come to an end.
* Russian President Vladimir Putin has confirmed that Ukrainian soldiers that are currently in the Kursk region will be guaranteed life if they surrender, local media reported Friday.
* The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces confirmed on Saturday that Ukrainian forces have withdrawn from Sudzha, a key town in Russia's western Kursk region.
* French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday called on Russia to accept a 30-day ceasefire proposal formulated during the U.S.-Ukraine meeting in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, earlier this week.
* The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump is mulling new travel bans against 43 countries, including a possible pause of processing visa applications from Afghanistan, Iran and Syria, U.S. media reported Friday.
* Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen on Friday dismissed speculation that Greenland might become part of the United States, following remarks by U.S. President Donald Trump suggesting a potential U.S. annexation of the island.
* The integration process between Belarus and Russia must become irreversible, visiting Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said Friday as he addressed the Russian Federation Council, the upper house of parliament.
* Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev met with Chairman of the Russian State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin on Friday, with a willingness to expand cooperation between their parliaments.
* The Kazakh peacekeeping contingent, deployed a year ago as part of the United Nations (UN) forces on the Golan Heights, has completed 557 missions over the past year, Kazakhstan's Ministry of Defense reported on Friday.
* China proposed five points on the proper settlement of the Iranian nuclear issue, as Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Ryabkov Sergey Alexeevich and Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi in Beijing on Friday.
* Turkish Defense Minister Yasar Guler said Saturday that the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) must dissolve "as soon as possible" and surrender its weapons unconditionally in all regions.
* The Presidency of South Africa has expressed regret over the expulsion of South African Ambassador to the United States Ebrahim Rasool.
* Joao Lourenco, Angolan president and current African Union (AU) chair, on Saturday urged all parties involved in the conflict in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to cease hostilities starting at 0:00 local time on Sunday, according to a statement released by the Angolan Presidency.
* Iran's Foreign Ministry Spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said on Friday Tehran welcomes the agreement reached by Armenia and Azerbaijan on the terms of a peace treaty between the two countries.
* UN humanitarians said on Friday that 63,000 metric tons of food await an end to the Gaza aid blockade, enough for 1.1 million people for two to three months. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said the 12-day aid blockage hinders relief operations.
* Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz announced on Friday that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) will maintain its presence at five strategic locations in southern Lebanon "indefinitely," regardless of ongoing negotiations over 13 disputed border points.
* Iraqi leaders met with Syria's chief of foreign affairs authority, Asaad al-Shaibani, in Baghdad on Friday to discuss bilateral relations and anti-terrorism cooperation.
* Hamas said Friday it has given mediators its agreement to release Israeli-U.S. hostage Edan Alexander and the bodies of four other hostages.
* The number of foreign nationals residing in Japan reached more than 3.7 million as of the end of 2024, marking a record high for the third consecutive year, government data showed Friday. As of December, 3,768,977 foreigners resided in Japan, up 10.5 percent from a year before, according to the Immigration Services Agency.
* A trade war initiated by U.S. President Donald Trump would harm the global economy, including that of the country imposing the measures, European Central Bank (ECB) President Christine Lagarde warned on Friday.
* The newly imposed tariffs on goods imported into the United States are expected to have a "moderate impact" on Poland's economy, Polish Minister of Finance Andrzej Domanski said in an interview on Friday.
* Foreign direct investment (FDI) in the Chinese mainland in actual use reached 171.21 billion yuan (about 23.87 billion USD) in the first two months of 2025, the Ministry of Commerce said Friday. The actual use of FDI in the January to February period went down 20.4 percent year on year, the ministry revealed.
* Foreign direct investments pledged to Nepal had increased in the first eight months of the current 2024-25 fiscal year, the government announced on Friday.
* Britain's monthly real gross domestic product (GDP) fell by 0.1 percent in January 2025, mainly caused by a fall in the production sector, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
* NASA and SpaceX launched a new crewed mission to the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday to bring home two NASA astronauts who have been stranded in space since last June.
* There is a great danger of snow avalanches in the Slovenian mountains and flooding in lowlands, the Slovenian Environmental Agency (ARSO) said on Friday.
* Authorities in the east Indian state of Bihar have sounded an alert in view of the bird flu (Avian Influenza H5N1) outbreak in some districts, officials said Friday.
