* China congratulated Vladimir Putin on Monday on winning Russia's presidential election and said the strategic relationship between the two countries will continue to strengthen.
* Russian President Vladimir Putin warned the West on Monday that a direct conflict between Russia and the U.S.-led NATO military alliance would mean the planet was one step away from World War Three but said hardly anyone wanted such a scenario.
* Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia was ready for talks on a French proposal for a ceasefire in Ukraine during the Olympic games, but would need to take Russia's interests on the frontline into account.
* Indonesia's General Election Commission (KPU) has announced the official results of the vote counts for the 2024 election in 33 of the total 38 provinces. Indonesia held its 2024 elections on Feb. 14, choosing national and regional legislative candidates in addition to the president and vice president.
* Colombia will suspend its months-long ceasefire with the Estado Mayor Central (ECM) armed group in three provinces on Wednesday, a government decree said on Sunday, citing incidents of violence that broke the ceasefire.
* Azeri President Ilham Aliyev said on Sunday his country is "closer than ever" to a peace with Armenia, half a year after Azerbaijan recaptured its Karabakh region from its ethnic Armenian majority.
* Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Sunday that preventing Israeli forces from invading Gaza's southern city of Rafah is an urgent priority.
* Israel will send a high-level delegation headed by its Mossad chief to Qatar on Monday for mediated talks with Hamas designed to secure a six-week Gaza truce under which the Palestinian militants would free 40 hostages, an Israeli official said.
* Israeli troops raided the compound of Gaza's Al Shifa Hospital early on Monday in an operation that Palestinian health authorities said caused multiple casualties and set off a fierce fire in one of the buildings.
* More than 31,726 Palestinians have been killed and 73,792 have been injured in Israeli military offensive on Gaza since Oct. 7, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Monday.
* The U.N. children's agency said on Sunday over 13,000 children have been killed in Gaza in Israel's offensive, adding many kids were suffering from severe malnutrition and did not "even have the energy to cry."
* Israel is provoking famine in Gaza and using starvation as a weapon of war, the EU's foreign policy Chief Josep Borrell said on Monday.
* The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) estimated on Sunday that the ongoing conflict has reduced infrastructure in the Gaza Strip into 23 million tons of rubble.
* Afghanistan's Taliban said on Monday that Pakistan carried out two air strikes on its territory, killing five women and three children, and its security forces launched heavy weapons at the Pakistani military in retaliation.
* The global energy forum CERAWeek is kicking off Monday in Houston, in the U.S. state Texas, to explore opportunities and risks in a turbulent energy world amid transformation.
* U.S. central bankers are not expected to cut borrowing costs this week, but their new economic projections may be a wild card, potentially signaling fewer interest rate cuts and a later start to the policy easing than they previously had estimated.
* Germany had a 2.29 billion euro ($2.49 billion) international electricity trade deficit last year, driven by the closure of its last nuclear power plant and imports of cheaper foreign power, Augsburger Allgemeine newspaper reported on Monday.
* The Asian Development Bank (ADB) on Monday said it has approved a 100-million-USD loan for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Sri Lanka to have more access to finance and build their resilience to external shocks, such as economic crisis and climate change.
* A volcano in Iceland that erupted on Saturday for the fourth time since December was still spewing smoke and bright orange lava into the air early on Monday although infrastructure and a nearby fishing town were safe for now, authorities said.
