* UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Friday launched a plan to boost empowerment of women and girls around the world.
* Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Friday that women should not settle for current achievements but continue to strive for additional rights.
* Tens of thousands of women marched in demonstrations across Spain on Friday to protest against gender inequality and to mark International Women's Day.
* Nearly 3,000 pregnant women in Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, risk being cut off from essential healthcare if the current gang war-driven paralysis of the city continues, the United Nations said on Friday.
* The Security Council on Friday adopted a resolution calling for the immediate cessation of hostilities in Sudan during the holy month of Ramadan.
* Tuvalu Prime Minister Feleti Teo spoke for the first time since taking office with his Australian counterpart, Anthony Albanese, a Tuvalu official said on Saturday, after the Pacific Island leader called for changes to a landmark bilateral treaty.
* Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said local elections scheduled for March 31 would be his last vote, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported on Friday.
* The U.S. Senate narrowly averted a partial government shutdown on Friday, as the chamber approved spending legislation for several government agencies just hours before current funding was due to expire.
* Latvia's ban on imports of Russian and Belarusian agricultural products came into effect on Friday, local news agency LETA reported.
* The Greek parliament passed a significant bill on Saturday, allowing for the establishment of private non-profit universities in the country for the first time.
* Israel struck one of the largest residential towers in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on Saturday, residents said, stepping up pressure on the last area of the enclave it has not yet invaded and where over a million displaced Palestinians are sheltering.
* Commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) Philippe Lazzarini said on Friday that the situation in the Gaza Strip defies description and has not been seen "in any previous crisis."
* Canada will resume funding to the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency, International Aid Minister Ahmed Hussen said on Friday, becoming one of the first international donors to announce such a move.
* Sweden said on Saturday it would resume suspended payments to the UNRWA, with a grant of 200 million crowns ($20 million).
* A temporary port that the United States is seeking to build to speed up aid to Gaza will take "several weeks" in planning and execution, a Pentagon spokesperson told reporters on Friday, adding that the U.S. eventually aimed to provide 2 million meals to Gazans daily.
* At least 30,960 Palestinians have been killed and 72,524 have been wounded since Oct. 7 in Israel's military offensive on the Gaza Strip, the enclave's health ministry said in a statement on Saturday.
* The Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, said in a statement on Friday that a ceasefire and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza are essential conditions for any prisoner exchange agreement.
* Yemen's Houthi group launched a missile attack on a commercial ship in the Gulf of Aden on Friday, continuing their escalation of tension in the region, said a pro-government Coast Guard official.
* Russian energy giant Gazprom GAZP.MM said it would send 42.3 million cubic metres (mcm) of natural gas to Europe via Ukraine on Saturday, almost the same level as the day before.
* The World Bank approved a $350 million loan for Costa Rica to fund infrastructure and climate and disaster resilience projects, the lender said on Friday.
* Cambodia had exported 90,153 tons of milled rice in the first two months of 2024, down 7.2 percent from 97,153 tons over the same period 2023, said a Cambodia Rice Federation's report released on Saturday.
* U.S. employers added 275,000 jobs in February, the highest level in two years, with the unemployment rate rising to 3.9 percent, the U.S. Labor Department reported Friday.
* Canada's unemployment rate increased 0.1 percentage points to 5.8 percent, offsetting a decline in January, Statistic Canada said Friday.
* Large swaths of Australia on Saturday sweated through severe heatwave conditions that lifted bushfire risk in the country's southeast.
