* The U.N. aid chief said on Monday efforts will continue in coming days to extend a deal allowing the safe Black Sea export of Ukraine grain, a pact Russia has threatened to quit on May 18 over obstacles to its grain and fertilizer exports.
* Georgia's aviation authority has issued a permit to Russian airline Azimuth to operate flights between Russia and Georgia from May 17, state-owned Russian news agency TASS reported on Monday.
* The Sudanese army carried out air strikes in the north of the capital Khartoum on Monday, attacking its paramilitary rivals around a hospital that witnesses said was damaged in the bombardment.
* Turkey's sovereign dollar bonds and equities tumbled, and the cost of insuring exposure to the country's debt spiked as Turkey's presidential race heads to a runoff with incumbent Tayyip Erdogan leading his opposition rival.
* Local elections are held in Albania on Sunday to elect mayors and councils for the country's 61 municipalities. The competition is ongoing between the ruling Socialist Party of Albania led by Prime Minister Edi Rama and the Together We Win coalition.
* European Commissioner Mariya Gabriel, a member of Bulgaria's centre-right GERB party, received a mandate on Monday to form a new cabinet following last month's elections.
* Britain has no plans to send fighter jets to Ukraine after the Ukrainian military indicated it would prefer to use F-16 fighter jets, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's spokesman said on Monday.
* Mexico and Guatemala are beefing up their southern borders with military personnel, while Panama and Colombia are working to clamp down on smuggling networks after a key US border policy expired last week, a top US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official said on Monday.
* Congressional and White House negotiators are still "far apart" in talks on a plan to raise the nation's debt limit to avoid a catastrophic default, US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told reporters on Monday.
* The European Union's (EU) economy has avoided a recession and is now on a path of moderate growth in 2023 and 2024, Paolo Gentiloni, European commissioner for economy, said on Monday.
* Israel announced on Monday that it had signed a 20-million-euro (21.75 million USD) deal with Montenegro for the Balkan nation to purchase Israeli-made weapons.
* Israel and Cyprus have agreed to build a natural gas pipe that will carry Israeli natural gas to Cyprus, the latter country's Energy, Commerce and Industry Minister Giorgos Papanastasiou said in Nicosia on Monday.
* Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian stressed on Sunday the necessity of international support for Syria's reconstruction, saying it is essential to help the country's displaced people return to their homes.
* Argentina's central bank on Monday hiked its benchmark interest rate by 600 basis points to 97%, according to an official announcement, as the country battles to bring down inflation that hit 109% on an annual basis in April.
* Indonesia recorded a trade surplus of 3.94 billion USD in April, up from the previous month's 2.91 billion dollars, according to Statistics Indonesia (BPS) on Monday.
* Personal remittances from overseas Filipinos reached 2.97 billion USD in March 2023, 3 percent higher than the 2.89 billion dollars recorded in March 2022, the Philippine central bank said on Monday.
* A charge to help fund gas imports into Germany will more than double from July, according to Trading Hub Europe (THE), which was tasked by Berlin with ensuring national stocks get Europe's top economy through the winter.
* Ghana expects the International Monetary Fund to approve a first loan tranche of $600 million as soon as Wednesday, paving the way for disbursement within a week, Minister of State in the Finance Ministry Mohammed Amin Adam told Reuters on Sunday.
* Bangladesh's trade deficit in the first three quarters of the current 2022-23 fiscal year from July 2022 to June 2023 dipped by 41.62 percent to 14.61 billion USD year on year, the latest central bank data showed.
* The International Organization for Migration (IOM) on Monday re-appealed for 58.5 million USD to provide lifesaving humanitarian assistance to over 1 million vulnerable migrants on the "Eastern Route," which runs from the Horn of Africa to Yemen and Gulf nations.
* At least 676 people have been killed due to the clashes between the Sudanese Army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), according to a report of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on Sunday.
* The Australian government has announced funding to establish a national and reliable flood warning network.
* Five people have been killed after the extremely severe cyclonic storm Mocha swept into Myanmar on Sunday, state media reported on Monday.
