* Chinese Premier Li Keqiang met with Cuban president Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermudez, who is also the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, on Friday in Beijing.
* Cambodia and Laos on Friday vowed to further boost bilateral ties and cooperation for mutual benefits, said a press statement from Cambodia's National Assembly.
* Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said on Friday that his government will prioritize dealing with the cost of living to ease the burden on the people.
* The BRICS, consisting of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, acts as "an example of genuine multilateral diplomacy that meets the realities of the 21st century," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Thursday.
* Britain and Singapore have signed a deal to try to break down trade barriers in the fintech sector by opening new regular talks between regulators and businesses, the UK's Treasury department said on Friday.
* Leftist Peruvian President Pedro Castillo has accepted the resignation of his prime minister and will reshuffle his Cabinet once again, he said on Thursday, amid a lengthy battle between the executive and legislative branches.
* Ukrainian authorities have set up 3,720 emergency shelters across the country amid an energy supply cutoff after Russia's missile attack on energy infrastructure, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the Ukrainian president's office, said Thursday on Telegram.
* The interior ministers of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and Austria met in Prague on Thursday to discuss the problems caused by illegal migration into the Schengen Area, a visa-free zone comprising most of the Europe Union (EU) countries.
* Venezuela's government and opposition are preparing to resume political talks this Saturday in Mexico after a hiatus of more than a year, opening a new chapter that could help pave the way for easing US oil sanctions on the OPEC nation.
* President Ilham Aliyev said on Friday that Azerbaijan did not want France to take part in its peace talks with Armenia, and called off a four-way meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron and European Council head Charles Michel in Brussels on Dec. 7.
* The United Nations (UN) High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi on Thursday called on the European Union (EU) to put safety and solidarity at the heart of its action in the Mediterranean and along all other migratory routes.
* EU interior ministers gathered for an emergency meeting on Friday to try and ease resurgent tensions over illegal migration, after the fate of migrants rescued in the Mediterranean triggered harsh words between Paris and Rome.
* Spain and the European Commision have sent Britain a proposal to keep the Gibraltar land border open as part of a definitive solution settling the post-Brexit status of the enclave, the Spanish foreign ministry said on Friday.
* Any agreement on the European Commission's proposal to cap the price of imported gas will be postponed until the middle of December, said Jozef Sikela, the Czech minister of industry and trade, and chair of the extraordinary meeting of EU energy ministers, on Thursday.
* The death toll of the 5.6-magnitude earthquake hitting Indonesia's West Java province increased to 310, and 24 others were still missing, an official said on Friday.
* Chinese Vice Premier Sun Chunlan has asked local authorities of southwest China's Chongqing Municipality to try their best to contain the COVID-19 outbreak and return people's life and work to normal as quickly as possible.
* Australia has reported a small uptick in active COVID-19 cases as the country nears the peak of its fourth wave of infections. According to Department of Health data, there were an average of 11,953 new cases recorded daily in the week to Friday.
* The EU's medicines regulator on Thursday urged Europe to prepare for a new wave of COVID-19 as "cold winter months" arrive.
* Poland would receive support from the EU post-pandemic recovery fund within a year and a half, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on Thursday.
* Over 50,000 Swedes are estimated to suffer from long-COVID, Swedish Television (SVT) reported on Thursday.
* Israeli researchers have developed an invisible face mask that protects users from coronavirus, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), influenza and other respiratory viruses, the Israel Institute of Technology (Technion) said Thursday.
* The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) on Thursday called for more support to help the organization assist vulnerable Palestinian refugee families amid the deteriorating financial situation in Lebanon.
* Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar on Friday refuted allegations that a Turkish airstrike, launched as part of the country's offensive against the mainly-Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) militia, hit a position of US coalition forces in northern Syria.
* Record inflation in Europe's largest economy has hit people on low incomes much harder, said president of the German Institute for Economic Research Marcel Fratzscher on Thursday.
* Myanmar's total goods imports and exports surged 22.32 percent year on year to over 21.46 billion USD in nearly eight months of the 2022-23 fiscal year beginning in April, official data showed Friday.
* The German economy grew slightly more in the third quarter than suggested by preliminary figures on the back of consumer spending, adding to signs that a coming recession will not hit as hard as initially feared, data showed on Friday.
* Brazil's Business Confidence Index for industry (ICEI) fell across the 29 industrial sectors in November, according to a report released Thursday by the National Confederation of Industry (CNI).
* Pakistan will repay a $1 billion international bond on Dec. 2, three days before its due date, the governor of Pakistan central bank told a briefing on Friday.
* Sweden's central bank (Riksbank) announced on Thursday a 75-percentage-point key rate hike to 2.5 percent -- the highest in 14 years.
* Poland's government will propose that gas tariffs for households be frozen at 2022 levels, the climate minister said on Friday.
* Namibia's state-owned railway company TransNamib plans to shift coal exports from Botswana off the road and onto rail by early next year, potentially doubling exports via Walvis Bay port, its CEO said.
* Ghana's government is working on a new policy to buy oil products with gold rather than US dollar reserves, Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia said on Facebook on Thursday.
* Ghana has announced a 2.8 percent economic growth rate target for 2023.
* Somali security forces backed by international partners killed 15 al-Shabab militants in a sting operation carried out in southern Somalia on Friday.
