* Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Saturday accepted his candidacy for presidency in the July 28 election during the National Congress of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela.
* India will elect a new parliament in seven phases between April 19 and early June, the country's election authority said on Saturday, in what amounts to the world's largest election with nearly one billion eligible to vote.
* U.S. President Joe Biden's re-election campaign raised more than $53 million in February and has $155 million cash-on-hand after pulling in the most grassroots fundraising since the campaign's launch.
* Russian election authorities said Saturday that about 160,000 cyberattacks on the country's remote electronic voting resources were blocked.
* Several Ukrainian drones attacked the Slavyansk oil refinery in Russia's Krasnodar Territory, causing a fire and a fatality, a local official said on Sunday.
* Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told CNN on Sunday that U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer's speech in which he urged new elections in Israel was "totally inappropriate."
* Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed international pressure on Sunday and said he would keep on with the military campaign against Hamas in Gaza, where aid agencies say famine is looming, while ceasefire talks were set to resume.
* The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) on Saturday called on Israel to halt its ground assault on Rafah, the southernmost city in Gaza, saying 1.2 million people there have nowhere safe to go.
* U.S. and Jordanian aircraft on Saturday dropped food supplies to Palestinian civilians trapped in the Gaza Strip in a joint humanitarian aid operation, U.S. Central Command said.
* The large number of civilian casualties that would result from an Israeli assault on the Gaza city of Rafah would make regional peace "very difficult", German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Sunday after talks with Jordanian King Abdullah.
* At least 31,645 Palestinians have been killed and 73,676 injured since Oct. 7 in Israel's military offensive on the Gaza Strip, the enclave's health ministry said on Sunday.
* The U.S. military said it destroyed a drone fired by the Yemeni Houthis on Saturday, with another crashing into the Red Sea.
* The U.N. children's agency said on Saturday one of its aid containers at Haiti's main port, stocked with "essential items for maternal, neonatal and child survival," was looted, as gangs increasingly control the capital.
* United Nations (UN) Special Envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen expressed concerns about the current situation in Syria during his visit to the country on Sunday, emphasizing the importance of de-escalation.
* The European Union announced a 7.4 billion euro ($8.06 billion) funding package and an upgraded relationship with Egypt, part of a push to stem migrant flows to Europe that has been criticised by rights groups.
* The Hezbollah-Israel conflict on the Lebanese southern border has caused an indirect cost of 350 million USD, local news service Leban News reported on Sunday.
* The Indian navy seized a cargo vessel hijacked by Somali pirates and rescued 17 crew members after forcing 35 pirates to surrender, the navy said Sunday.
* The number of Chinese inbound travelers to the Philippines surged by 235 percent year-on-year in the first two months of 2024, a Philippine lawmaker said Sunday.
* Ukraine's gross domestic product rose 3.6% in the first two months of this year, and growth is expected to continue in the first quarter, the economy minister Yulia Svyrydenko said on Sunday.
* The Cambodian government had a total public debt stock of 11.24 billion USD as of 2023, according to the Cambodia Public Debt Statistical Bulletin released by the Ministry of Economy and Finance on Sunday.
* France has eased bird flu restrictions to 'moderate' from 'high' after two months without an outbreak on any farm in the country, its agriculture ministry said on Saturday.
* Lava flows from a volcano in southwest Iceland that had lit up the night sky on Saturday slowed on Sunday while man-made barriers appeared to be successful in steering the lava away from infrastructure including a nearby fishing town.
* A traffic accident in southern Afghanistan killed 21 people and injured dozens on Sunday, the provincial government said.
