* The Croatian parliament, officially constituted on Thursday, approved a new government led by incumbent Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic on Friday.
* South Africans living abroad started voting on Friday for the 2024 general elections at nine of the country's foreign missions overseas, according to the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC).
* Chinese President Xi Jinping has stressed efforts to improve modern tourism systems and accelerate the building of China into a country strong in tourism.
* Russia will retaliate against Ukrainian attacks on its regions, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Friday.
* Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday signed legislation allowing certain convicts to join the country's armed forces, the parliament press service reported.
* The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) conducted a test fire of tactical ballistic missile using a new autonomous navigation system in its eastern waters on Friday, the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported Saturday.
* Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico is awake and stable in intensive care after undergoing another operation on Friday, but his condition remains "very serious," the hospital told the media.
* Two top Biden administration officials held indirect talks with Iranian counterparts this week in an effort to avoid escalating regional attacks, Axios reported on Friday.
* Pakistan's foreign ministry said on Saturday it had summoned and handed a note of protest to Kyrgyzstan's top diplomat in the country in response to violence against Pakistani students in Bishkek.
* Five persons were killed and five others sustained injury as a result of a clash between the border forces of Afghanistan and Pakistan over the past four days, Afghan local media outlet TOLOnews reported Friday.
* Libya's eastern-based authorities are investigating the disappearance of a member of parliament, the region's interior ministry said, and it did not believe he had been killed.
* Aid deliveries began arriving at a U.S.-built pier off the Gaza Strip on Friday as Israel comes under growing global pressure to allow more supplies into the besieged coastal enclave, where it is at war with Palestinian militants Hamas and a famine looms.
* Hamas issued a statement on Friday saying the U.S.-built pier off the Gaza Strip is no alternative to opening all land crossings under Palestinian supervision, adding that they reject any military presence on Palestinian land.
* Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry stressed on Friday the need for Israel to open all land crossings between Israel and the Gaza Strip for full, safe, and unhindered access to humanitarian and relief aid into the war-torn area.
* A Palestinian militant was killed and eight other people wounded on Friday in an Israeli air strike on the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry and Israeli military said.
* At least 35,386 Palestinians have been killed and 79,366 have been wounded in Israel's military offensive on Gaza since Oct. 7, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Saturday.
* Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant said on Friday that Israel prefers to avoid a difficult war with the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah.
* NASA and Boeing delayed again the launch of the first crewed mission of the Starliner spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS) to no earlier than Tuesday, May 25, the agency said on Friday.
* The pitch rate gyroscopes gave erroneous inputs to the flight control computer, leading to the crash of an F-16 fighter jet of Singapore Air Force on May 8, the Ministry of Defense said Saturday.
* Egypt, one of the world's biggest wheat importers, has procured 2.8 million metric tons of wheat, compared to its target of 3.5 million tons, in its local harvest season that started in mid-April, a supply ministry official said on Saturday.
* Death toll from storms and floods in the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul since April 29 has risen to 154, the civil defense agency said Friday.
* At least 50 people are dead following a fresh bout of heavy rain and flooding in central Afghanistan, an official said on Saturday.
* The Indian capital city recorded the season's hottest day on Friday with the mercury soaring to 47.4 degrees Celsius, confirmed the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD).
* The death toll from destructive storms battering Houston, the U.S., on Thursday night has risen to at least seven, the Harris County Sheriff's Office confirmed on Friday evening.
* The Semeru volcano in Indonesia's East Java province erupted five times on Friday, spewing volcanic ash up to 900 meters over its peak, according to the Center for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation.
