* The election commission of Sri Lanka on Thursday announced that it will hold the presidential election between Sept. 17 and Oct. 16, 2024. Sri Lanka last held its presidential election in November 2019.
* Chad's interim president Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno has won the presidential election, according to provisional results released by the National Election Management Agency (ANGE) on Thursday evening.
* Chinese President Xi Jinping expressed on Thursday his readiness to work with Hungarian President Tamas Sulyok to carry forward the traditional friendship, deepen political mutual trust, strengthen mutually beneficial cooperation, and steer the China-Hungary relationship to higher levels.
* The aim of nuclear exercises planned by Russia is to work out the response to any attacks on Russian soil which the West has allowed Ukraine to carry out with the weapons it supplies, senior Russian security official Dmitry Medvedev said on Friday.
* Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas said that the United Nations General Assembly's backing on Friday of a Palestinian bid to become a full U.N. member supports Palestinian efforts for another vote on the issue by the U.N. Security Council.
* Israel's foreign minister called a decision by the United Nations General Assembly to upgrade the status of Palestinians in the UN a "prize for Hamas," in a statement released by the minister's office on Friday.
* The Israeli army will continue its operation in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah "as planned," after the talks on the Israel-Hamas truce held in Egypt's Cairo collapsed on Thursday, an Israeli official told Xinhua.
* The United Nations warned on Friday that aid for the Gaza Strip could grind to a halt in days, as Israeli troops took their ground war with Palestinian fighters into the crowded city of Rafah, a key aid corridor for the famine-threatened strip.
* Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Thursday called for all concerted international efforts to ensure the success of the ongoing mediation endeavors to reach a ceasefire deal in the Gaza Strip.
* Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Thursday called for more efforts to achieve a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip as soon as possible.
* Sri Lankan cabinet has endorsed the national digital strategy 2030, featuring six key points with the aim of a connecting digital government, State Minister for Technology Kanaka Herath said on Thursday.
* Cambodia exported products worth 8 billion USD in the first four months of 2024, up 15.2 percent from 6.94 billion dollars over the same period last year, said a General Department of Customs and Excise's report released on Friday.
* Malaysia's unemployed further decreased to 566,600 persons in March, registering an unemployment rate of 3.3 percent, official data showed Friday.
* The Bank of England (BoE), the United Kingdom's (UK) central bank, announced on Thursday that it will maintain its benchmark interest rate at 5.25 percent for the sixth consecutive time.
* The New Zealand government's upcoming budget will include new funding of 571 million NZ dollars (344 million USD) for defense force pay and projects.
* Myanmar has set a target of earning over 800 million USD from the export of fishery products in the 2024-25 fiscal year, an official from the Department of Fisheries told Xinhua on Friday.
* The Israeli Finance Ministry reported on Thursday that the nation's 12-month budget deficit has escalated to 132.2 billion shekels (35.4 billion USD), or 7 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP), as of the end of April.
* South Africa's manufacturing production, one of the country's pillar industries, contracted in the first quarter (Q1) of this year, dragged down by the production of motor vehicles, iron and steel, as well as related products, official data showed on Thursday.
* The International Monetary Fund (IMF) agreed to provide Jordan with 129 million USD under an existing Extended Fund Facility (EFF) to support its economy.
* The Moroccan navy rescued 38 migrants from a boat off the Atlantic coast near the port of Tan-Tan on Thursday, the official MAP news agency cited a statement from the Moroccan Royal Armed Forces as saying.
* Rains returned to Rio Grande do Sul on Friday as the death toll from historic floods in Brazil's southernmost state reached 113, according to local authorities, climbing from 107 in the previous day.
* China's National Meteorological Center on Friday issued a blue alert for rainstorms, as heavy downpours are expected to lash parts of the country.
* The El Nino dry spell and drought damage to Philippine agriculture has reached 5.9 billion pesos (103 million USD), Philippine President Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos said Thursday.
* The United Nations on Thursday launched a 429.3-million-USD drought appeal for Zimbabwe, following an El Nino-induced drought this year.
