* Strengthening of Russia-China ties will positively impact the economies of both countries and the bilateral trade turnover may reach $200 billion this year, Russian agencies cited Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin as saying on Tuesday.
* Authorities in India's northeastern Manipur Monday reimposed a curfew and deployed the army again on roads as fresh violence erupted in the state, officials said.
* Philippine President Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos on Monday said his country is looking at the Asian Development Bank (ADB) for "crucial development interventions" as the Southeast Asian country faces twin challenges of post-pandemic recovery and climate crisis.
* Cambodia attracted 1.29 million international visitors in the first quarter of 2023, an increase of 709 percent from only 159,546 over the same period last year, said a Ministry of Tourism's report released on Tuesday.
* The process of exchanging the currency notes of 2,000 (Indian Rupees) denomination began on Tuesday across India after the country's central bank announced the withdrawal of the highest-value currency notes from circulation.
* Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on Monday said that a possible withdrawal from the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) is still on Armenia's agenda.
* The Philippines is pursuing the resumption of free trade negotiations with the European Union (EU), Philippine Trade Secretary Alfredo Pascual said on Monday.
* Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis decided on Monday to return the exploratory mandate he had received from President Katerina Sakellaropoulou to form a government following this weekend's inconclusive elections.
* Turkish presidential candidate Sinan Ogan, who won third place by receiving 5.17 percent of the votes in the first round, endorsed incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday for the runoff elections slated for May 28.
* Bulgaria's largest force in Parliament, the GERB-UDF coalition, on Monday formally abandoned efforts to form a new government after it failed to secure a parliamentary majority.
* Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has returned early from the Group of Seven (G7) summit in Hiroshima to visit Italy's flood-ravaged region of Emilia-Romagna as details from what is being called the worst floods to hit Italy in a century began to be calculated.
* Countries raised a record $95 billion last year by charging firms for emitting carbon dioxide, but prices are still too low to drive changes needed to meet Paris climate accord targets, the World Bank said in a report on Tuesday.
* Bahrain will soon have an embassy and full diplomatic staff in Lebanon's capital Beirut, said Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib on Monday.
* Ukraine is continuing to pump natural gas into underground storage facilities, collecting 9.3 billion cubic metres (bcm) for the 2023/24 heating season, Ukrainian energy ministry said on Tuesday.
* Poland is in advanced talks to buy Swedish early warning planes and hopes negotiations will be finalised shortly, Polish Defence Minister Mariusz Blaszczak said on Monday.
* Russia's Gazprom said it would ship 41.2 million cubic metres of gas to Europe via Ukraine on Tuesday.
* Saudi Arabia's energy minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman said on Tuesday he would keep short sellers "ouching" and told them to "watch out", days before a planned OPEC+ meeting to decide on future oil policy.
* Jordan announced on Monday its imports of crude oil from Iraq have resumed after a suspension that began in early April.
* German exports to countries outside the European Union (EU) continued to fall in April, declining 5.2 percent year-on-year to 51.5 billion euros (55.62 billion USD), according to provisional data published by the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) on Monday.
* An International Monetary Fund mission started work on Tuesday on the first review of a $15.6 billion loan program that it approved in March, the Ukrainian finance ministry said.
* Britain's finance minister Jeremy Hunt said the International Monetary Fund's assessment published on Tuesday showed the country's economy was on the right track, adding that high inflation and energy prices remained the key challenges.
* Iraq is still waiting for a final answer from Turkey to resume its northern oil exports, which run from the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region to the Turkish port of Ceyhan, Iraq's oil minister Hayan Abdel-Ghani said on Tuesday.
* The United Nations Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) announced on Monday that it has allocated 5 million USD for its humanitarian efforts in Egypt to accommodate the people fleeing conflicts in neighboring Sudan.
* Sudanese refugees are streaming into Chad so quickly that it will be impossible to relocate them all to safer places before the start of the rainy season in late June, a senior Red Cross official said on Tuesday, flagging the risk of a disaster.
* The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said on Monday that children in the Horn of Africa face an unprecedented crisis that includes hunger, displacement, water shortages, and insecurity.
* Zimbabwe's government will closely regulate voluntary carbon offset trading in a bid to curb greenwashing and ensure benefits for local communities, its environment minister has said.
* Uruguayans in the capital Montevideo are praying for rain amid a historic drought that has left the main reservoir for the city with only ten days of water left.
* The massive earthquakes that jolted Syria and Turkey in February have affected 175,512 families in Syria's northwestern coastal province of Latakia, a report revealed on Monday.
* An earthquake of magnitude 6.2 struck southeast of Loyalty Islands region on Tuesday, said the German Research Center for Geosciences (GFZ). The quake was at a depth of 10 km (6.21 miles), GFZ said.
