* Cambodia on Friday launched the Partnership for Action on Green Economy (PAGE) to reaffirm its commitment towards sustaining the country's economic growth on a sustainable and inclusive trajectory.
* Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that Moscow had never refused the "diplomatic track" to resolving the conflict in Ukraine in a phone call with his South African counterpart, the Kremlin said.
* Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev said on Friday that Moscow will respond to what he called the "oppression" of Russian businesses and residents abroad on the principal of an "eye for an eye", the TASS news agency reported.
* Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that his country needs more time to launch a counteroffensive against Russia as the military forces are waiting for more aid, the government-run Ukrinform news agency reported Thursday.
* Angolan President Joao Lourenco emphasized the need for dialogue between Russia and Ukraine to establish a ceasefire and pave the way for a final peace negotiation in a speech on Wednesday.
* Kyrgyzstan attaches great importance to participating in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) cooperation, and is ready to intensify its interaction with the SCO member states in various fields, Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov said Thursday.
* Negotiations to extend a Black Sea Grain Initiative were nearing an agreement after two days of talks in Istanbul between Ukrainian, Russian, Turkish and UN officials, Turkey's Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said on Friday.
* Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Thursday urged Washington to pursue diplomacy and rapprochement, including with Cuba and Venezuela, as a way to tackle the immigration crisis.
* U.S. border authorities "did not see a substantial increase" in migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border when COVID restrictions known as Title 42 ended at midnight on Thursday, U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official Blas Nunez-Neto said on a call with reporters on Friday.
* European lawmakers on Thursday took a first step towards European Union-wide (EU) regulations on ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence (AI) systems.
* Iran and Oman on Thursday agreed to start cooperation in the space sector, the official news agency IRNA reported.
* Palestinian militants continued to fire rockets to the Jerusalem area for the first time since the current round of violence started on Tuesday, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed.
* Iran and Iraq have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on cooperation in implementing oil industry projects, the Shana News Agency affiliated to the Iranian Oil Ministry reported on Thursday.
* COVID-19 is no longer considered a public health emergency of international concern in Botswana, Christopher Nyanga, the spokesperson for Botswana's Ministry of Health, announced in a statement Friday.
* The African Union (AU) Commission and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), a trade bloc in eastern Africa, on Thursday launched a post-conflict needs assessment for South Sudan.
* The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) has warned of the ongoing cholera outbreak in southeastern Ethiopia as the death toll climbed to 94.
* India's retail inflation in April was recorded at 4.7 percent, the lowest in the past 18 months, official data showed on Friday. The retail inflation dropped from 5.66 percent in March, and 6.44 percent in February.
* Britain's economy grew sluggishly in early 2023, better than the shallow recession once expected, but an unexpectedly sharp drop in output in March underscored how fragile its recovery remains.
* The Malaysian economy expanded 5.6 percent year on year in the first quarter, driven mainly by domestic demand, official data showed Friday.
* Working gas storage in the contiguous United States was 2,141 billion cubic feet in the week ending May 5, a net increase of 78 billion cubic feet from the previous week, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said Thursday.
* Nepal's central bank on Friday lowered its benchmark policy rate at which it lends to commercial banks to 7.5% from 8.5%.
* Brazil will have a record harvest of cereals, beans and oilseeds in 2023, reaching 302.1 million tons, 14.8 percent more than last year, the state-run Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) reported Thursday.
