* Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan sought to build on his momentum going into Sunday's runoff presidential election, urging Turks to vote as the man aiming to defeat him called on electors to pull their country from "the dark pit" of his two-decade rule.
* China will make concrete efforts for a political solution to the Ukraine crisis, the Chinese foreign ministry quoted special envoy Li Hui as saying on Saturday.
* Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao met in Detroit Friday with South Korea's Trade Minister Ahn Duk-geun, with both sides vowing to intensify bilateral trade and economic cooperation.
* Pacific island leaders will meet South Korea's President Yoon Suk Yeol in Seoul on Monday, their third summit in a week with a large economy as the region seeks stronger action on climate change as it becomes a focus of geopolitical power attention.
* NATO on Saturday urged Kosovo to dial down tensions with Serbia, a day after its government forcibly accessed municipal buildings to install mayors in ethnic Serb areas in the north of the country.
* The Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) admitted on Saturday that it implemented "certain measures" linked to the explosion on the Crimean Bridge in October 2022.
* The prime ministers of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania discussed with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in the Estonian capital Tallinn on Friday on security issues, according to a spokesman for the Latvian prime minister.
* Afghan acting Prime Minister Mawlawi Abdul Kabir has stressed having positive relations based on mutual respect with the world community, a local television channel the Tolonews reported.
* Germany will remove more than 100 employees working at its missions in Russia after Moscow imposed limits on the numbers allowed to work in the country, a source with the German foreign ministry said on Saturday.
* Egypt closed two Red Sea ports on Saturday due to bad weather, the Red Sea Ports Authority said. The ports were Suez and Zeitiyat in the Suez province.
* Pakistani Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif on Friday said that his government will make all-out efforts to support the country's textile industry despite pressing financial challenges.
* Mexico's economy grew 3.7 percent in the first quarter of this year compared with the same period in 2022, according to revised figures released by the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Inegi) Friday.
* Housing prices in Finland are expected to have the biggest drop this year since 1993, according to a housing market review conducted by Hypo, a Finnish credit institution specializing in this sector.
* Ukraine is seeking to fix its perspective of joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) at the alliance's upcoming summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, head of the Ukrainian president's office Andriy Yermak said Friday.
* The Serbian army has been placed on full combat alert and ordered to move closer to the border with Kosovo after protesters clashed with the Kosovo police in the majority Serb town of Zvecan in north Kosovo, Serbia's national broadcaster RTS reported on Friday.
* Malta and France on Friday called on the European Union (EU) to take bold decisions on migration, which they consider an issue that must be addressed by the bloc collectively.
*The Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman on Saturday rejected as "baseless" the Ukrainian president's claims about Iran supplying Russia with drones for use against Ukraine.
* Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said on Saturday that certain Western countries seek to cause division and differences among the member states of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to serve their own interests.
* Armed clashes erupted on Saturday between Iranian and Afghan border guards on the common border, the Semi-official Tasnim news agency reported.
* The World Bank approved a project on Saturday to increase agricultural productivity, resilience, and services while protecting the natural resources in selected ancestral domains in the southern Philippines.
* The world body continues to push for Russian food and fertilizer exports as a parallel agreement with the Black Sea Grain Initiative, which allows Ukrainian agricultural exports from Black Sea ports, said a UN spokesman on Friday.
* The United Nations and its partners continue to help families displaced by the fighting in Sudan, as well as the communities hosting them, said a UN spokesman on Friday.
* The United Nations on Saturday declared that it has decided to temporarily pause the use of dual currency for next month's disbursement of cash assistance to Syrian refugees in Lebanon.
* The number of people arriving in Ethiopia fleeing from armed conflict in Sudan has surpassed 31,000, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) has disclosed.
