* The Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) Annual Conference 2024 concluded Friday in Boao, a coastal town in China's island province of Hainan, with a series of consensus reached.
* Japan and the U.S. will announce closer cooperation in high-tech areas such as artificial intelligence (AI) in a joint statement when Prime Minister Kishida Fumio meets with President Joe Biden next month, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper said on Saturday. Biden is set to host Kishida for an official visit to the U.S. on April 10.
* President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in an interview published on Friday that if Ukraine does not get promised U.S. military aid blocked by disputes in Congress, its forces will have to retreat "in small steps".
* There has been a surge of migrant workers leaving Russia for Tajikistan after a March 22 concert hall attack near Moscow which left dozens dead, according to Tajikistan's Ministry of Labour, Migration and Employment.
* The Indian Navy said it had freed a hijacked Iranian fishing vessel from nine armed pirates in the Arabian Sea on Friday, rescuing its crew unharmed.
* The Azerbaijani Embassy in the Iranian capital Tehran would soon resume its operations, Iran's official news agency IRNA reported on Friday.
* Indian government has ordered the mandatory declaration of the stock position of wheat on a weekly basis from April, officials said Saturday.
* Egypt received approval on Friday from the International Monetary Fund's executive board for an expanded, $8 billion financial support programme that enables the immediate release of $820 million, the IMF said in a statement.
* Greece's Piraeus Port Authority S.A. (PPA), which runs the country's largest port, posted record-high turnover and profits in 2023, the company said. Total revenues reached 219.8 million euros (237.13 million USD), up 12.9 percent from 2022, according to a press statement released on Friday.
* The Ethiopian government launched a six-month nationwide campaign on Friday to fight environmental pollution.
* Afghanistan's capital city of Kabul will launch and implement 165 development projects in the current year of 1403 on the Persian calendar, local TV TOLOnews reported on Saturday.
* A hostage drama at a nightclub in the eastern Netherlands ended on Saturday when police arrested a man wearing a balaclava mask after he exited the club. There was no indication of a terrorist motive, police said earlier.
* Humanitarian aid operations in Sudan have faced obstructions as the ongoing deadly clashes between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) continue to exacerbate the already severe food and health crisis shrouding the war-torn land.
* Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), on Friday urged Israel to allow the organization's food and nutrition convoys reach northern Gaza and to open additional land crossings to facilitate the delivery of aid amid international warnings of famine in the coastal enclave.
* The Algerian Red Crescent said Friday that it will send 162 tons of additional humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip. The aid will be transported from Algeria's Boufarik Military Airport to Egypt's Al-Arish Airport, and then to Gaza through the Rafah crossing point.
* At least 32,705 Palestinians have been killed and 75,190 injured in Israel's military offensive on Gaza since Oct. 7, the Gaza health ministry said on Saturday.
* Canada's Niagara Region declared a state of emergency as it prepares for an influx of visitors for next month's total solar eclipse, local media reported Friday.
* Eleven people were injured when a Bulgarian cruise ship crashed into a concrete wall in a sluice on the River Danube in the northern Austrian town of Aschach an der Donau overnight, local police said on Saturday.
