* Icelanders headed to the polls on Saturday for a general parliamentary election, with rising support for the Social Democratic Alliance and a late surge for the Independence Party, led by outgoing Prime Minister Bjarni Benediktsson.
* Romania's Constitutional Court (CCR) announced on Friday that it has delayed its ruling on the annulment of the first-round results of the Nov. 24 presidential election to Dec. 2.
* Kim Jong Un, the top leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), on Friday met visiting Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov in Pyongyang, the DPRK's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported Saturday.
* Russia has extended its food embargo on countries that have imposed sanctions against it until the end of 2026, according to a government document released on Friday. The resolution adopted by the Russian government also revealed an expansion of the embargo list to include New Zealand.
* Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky voiced his readiness to end the "hot phase" of the conflict with Russia in exchange for Ukraine's membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the Interfax-Ukraine news agency reported on Friday.
* Hundreds of thousands of workers in Italy staged an eight-hour strike on Friday, protesting against Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's 2025 budget, rising living costs, and low wages.
* Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Friday incoming U.S. President Donald Trump's threats on tariffs should be taken seriously.
* The Australian government has announced humanitarian assistance to support the Philippines' recovery from a devastating series of tropical storms.
* The Afghan caretaker government's national procurement commission has approved 317 development projects across the nation over the past three years, as reported by the office of the acting deputy prime minister for economic affairs.
* Russia successfully launched the Soyuz-2.1a rocket from the Vostochny Cosmodrome of Russia's Far East early Saturday, placing the Kondor-FKA No. 2 radar satellite into its designated orbit.
* Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty and his Syrian counterpart Bassam Sabbagh on Saturday discussed in a phone call the escalating situation in northern Syria, particularly in the provinces of Idlib and Aleppo, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
* The Jordan Hashemite Charity Organization said on Saturday it had dispatched a new humanitarian aid convoy to the Gaza Strip in cooperation with the Jordanian Armed Forces and the World Food Programme.
* The foreign ministers of Iran and Russia voiced support for Syria on Saturday during a major attack by rebel groups, Iranian state media reported.
* Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan spoke by phone with Qatari Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani on Saturday to discuss the situation in Syria, Turkish Foreign Ministry sources said.
* Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi renewed his support for Palestinian statehood on Friday, marking the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.
* An Israeli strike on a car wounded three people, including a seven-year-old child, on Saturday in the south Lebanon village of Majdal Zoun, the Lebanese Health Ministry said in a statement.
* Kenyan President William Ruto said on Saturday he and Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni would help mediate between Ethiopia and Somalia in a dispute that threatens to destabilise the Horn of Africa region.
* Air routes connecting China and Southeast Asia registered 19.62 million passenger trips in the first 10 months of 2024, up 136.7 percent year on year, as revealed during the 2024 New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor Forum on China-ASEAN Aviation Development on Friday.
* India's economic growth slowed to 5.4 percent during the period from July to September, marking the slowest pace in seven quarters, government data released on Friday showed. The previous quarter from April to June recorded a growth of 6.7 percent.
* The Thanksgiving Day on Thursday generated 33.6 billion USD in sales online globally, an increase of 6 percent from a year ago, Salesforce said Friday, adding the U.S. market alone went up 8 percent to 8.1 billion dollars, and Europe was also a standout with a growth of 10 percent.
* Canada's real gross domestic product (GDP) edged up 0.1 percent in September, after remaining essentially unchanged in August, Statistics Canada said Friday.
* The Philippines' foreign investments yielded net outflows of 529.68 million USD in October, the Philippine central bank has said.
* Brazil's unemployment rate fell to 6.2 percent in the August-October period, the lowest level since 2012, said the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) on Friday.
* Sri Lankan workers' remittances reached 5.4 billion USD between January and October this year, compared to over 4.8 billion dollars in the corresponding period in 2023, according to the latest report of the country's central bank.
* The death toll from the worst floods in decades in southern Thailand and northern Malaysia climbed to at least 12 on Saturday, authorities said, as tens of thousands of people were evacuated due to rising water levels in the past three days.
* Nearly 480,000 have been affected by the adverse weather in Sri Lanka since Nov. 22, the country's Disaster Management Center (DMC) said on Saturday.
* Uganda has urged people living in disaster-prone mountainous areas to evacuate immediately after a landslide killed 20 people and left another 100 missing in the eastern district of Bulambuli.
