* Thailand's Prime Minister and APEC host Prayuth Chan-ocha said on Friday he wanted this week's meeting of the bloc in Bangkok to discuss how leaders can help transition to sustainable economic growth and development.
* Egypt COP27 President Sameh Shoukry told climate negotiators to speed up their talks on Friday, the final scheduled day of their meeting, expressing concern at the number of issues left to be solved and targeting a deal being reached on Saturday.
* Lao, Thai and Myanmar officials have met to discuss joint efforts to crack down on transnational crime, especially drug trafficking in the Golden Triangle border area, a media report said Friday.
* Cuba aims to bring more products to the Chinese e-commerce platform JD.com, Deputy Minister of Foreign Trade and Investment Deborah Rivas said Thursday.
* Russia is open to more high-level talks with the United States, a top diplomat said on Friday, but the Kremlin dismissed the idea of a summit between President Vladimir Putin and US President Joe Biden as "out of the question" for now.
* Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan told Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin the meeting between American and Russian intelligence services was important to prevent "uncontrolled" escalation in the field, the Turkish presidency said on Friday.
* US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced on Thursday that she's stepping down as top Democrat in the House of Representatives.
* The Colombian government and left-wing guerrilla group the National Liberation Army (ELN) are set to restart peace talks to end nearly 60 years of war next week, the government said.
* UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres held a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday, and discussed the future of the Black Sea Grain Initiative and ways to improve its impact on the least developed countries, said a UN spokesman on Friday.
* Turkey's President Tayyip Erdogan talked on the phone with Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskiy and congratulated each other for the extension of a U.N.-brokered grains deal, Erdogan's office said.
* French President Emmanuel Macron held talks with Thailand's Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha at the APEC summit, during which the two leaders pledged more co-operation and commerce, Macron's Elysee office said on Friday.
* Russia's President Vladimir Putin said Russia was interested in working in close cooperation with Qatar to ensure stability in the global gas market, in a phone call with Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani on Friday, the Kremlin said.
* US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to Qatar on Nov. 21-22 to launch the fifth annual US-Qatar Strategic Dialogue, the State Department said on Friday.
* The U.N. nuclear watchdog is aware of all of Iran’s activities, the head of country's atomic energy organisation said on Friday, a day after the atomic agency's Board of Governors demanded explanation for traces of uranium at three undeclared sites.
* France and Germany are set to sign an energy agreement next week, a French government source said on Friday.
* The Royal Palace, the most popular tourist spot in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, will be reopened for the public from Dec. 1 after a closure for more than two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
* Japan's consumer prices increased 3.6 percent in October from a year earlier, marking a 40-year high, owing to a weak yen further inflating soaring energy costs, the government said in a report on Friday.
* The European Central Bank (ECB) President Christine Lagarde on Friday reiterated the central bank's determination to fight record high inflation, but promised to reduce its balance sheet "moderately."
* Brazil's Economy Ministry cut its 2022 inflation forecast from 6.3 percent to 5.85 percent due to a drop in the price of a barrel of oil on the international market, and a reduction in federal and state taxes, according to a report on Thursday.
* Hungarian teachers, students and parents stepped up their protest calling for higher wages and education reforms on Friday, forming a 10-km (six-mile) human chain in central Budapest, with smaller rallies held across the country.
* Thousands of Portugal's doctors, nurses, teachers and civil servants walked off the job on Friday to demand wage increases amid rampant inflation, challenging the majority Socialist government a week before a final vote on the 2023 budget.
* Chile's economy expanded 0.3% in the third quarter of 2022 from a year earlier, central bank data showed on Friday, slightly above expectations of a 0.2% increase from economists polled by Reuters.
* Pakistan's food export in the first four months of the current 2022-23 fiscal year surged by 4.26 percent from a year earlier, according to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) on Friday.
* Mongolia's gross domestic product (GDP) expanded 3.7 percent year on year in the first three quarters of this year, official data from the country's National Statistics Office (NSO) showed Friday.
* Sri Lanka's Wildlife and Forest Resources Conservation Ministry has decided to conduct a new countrywide census on the elephant population in 2023, the parliament's media unit said in a press release on Friday.
* Fifteen people were killed in a gas cylinder explosion in a residential area in the northern Iraqi city of Sulaimaniya, the civil defence said on Friday.
* A 6.8-magnitude earthquake hit Indonesia's western province of Bengkulu on Friday evening, without causing damages or casualties, a weather agency and an official said.
