* UN relief chief Tom Fletcher recently welcomed U.S. President Donald Trump's Gaza peace proposal for opening new possibilities to deliver large-scale, desperately needed life-saving aid.
* The 157th joint Mekong River patrol by China, Laos, Myanmar and Thailand concluded on Tuesday, the public security department of southwest China's Yunnan Province announced on Wednesday. More than 100 law-enforcement personnel and seven patrol vessels from the four countries were involved in the latest joint patrol of the river.
* The Republic of Korea (ROK) President Lee Jae-myung on Wednesday vowed to build peace based on strong security, emphasizing that the ROK should move toward a strong, self-reliant defense.
* Portugal's parliament on Tuesday approved a revised immigration law that sets new rules for entry, residence, and family reunification of foreign nationals.
* The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) is facing an unsustainable nuclear safety situation after being without external power for more than a week, the UN nuclear watchdog said Tuesday in a statement.
* The U.S. federal government entered a shutdown at the start of Wednesday as partisan divisions prevented Congress from passing a funding bill, which marks the first government shutdown in nearly seven years.
* The Republic of Korea (ROK) and the United States held the first meeting of a bilateral working group in Washington on Tuesday to address visa issues for South Korean businessmen investing in the United States, the ROK foreign ministry said Wednesday.
* The Russian Foreign Ministry said Tuesday that it will soon expel an Austrian diplomat in response to Austria's recent decision to declare a Russian diplomat persona non grata.
* Venezuelan Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello said on Tuesday that the country is prepared for any foreign aggression, depicting the Venezuelan people as united in defending their homeland.
* Finnish President Alexander Stubb on Tuesday approved a government proposal for the Finnish Defense Forces to help safeguard Denmark's airspace and counter drones during the upcoming European Union (EU) leaders' informal meeting in Copenhagen, the Defence Ministry announced.
* Bulgaria needs to boost its energy security by implementing projects to ensure energy supplies to consumers amid expected higher demand, the country's Vice President Iliana Iotova said on Tuesday.
* The Netherlands will deploy Patriot systems and National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System (NASAMS), along with counter-drone systems, to Poland from December to bolster NATO's eastern flank and protect a key logistics hub supporting Ukraine, the Dutch Defense Ministry said on Tuesday.
* The Israeli army on Wednesday announced the closure of Al-Rasheed coastal road, the main route linking southern and northern Gaza, to prevent the return of displaced Palestinians.
* Qatar said on Tuesday that it will hold mediation talks with Hamas and Türkiye over a U.S.-proposed peace plan for Gaza. Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesman Majed al-Ansari told reporters in Doha that Turkish representatives are set to take part in a meeting of the Gaza mediation team later in the day, while Hamas officials study the plan put forward by U.S. President Donald Trump.
* Yemen's Houthi group on Wednesday claimed responsibility for an attack on a Dutch-flagged cargo ship in the Gulf of Aden two days ago. Houthi military spokesman Yahya Sarea said the group attacked Minervagracht with a cruise missile because the ship's owner has dealings with Israel.
* Turkish security forces detained 59 suspects in nationwide operations against illegal online betting, according to the country's interior ministry on Wednesday.
* The death toll in the 6.9-magnitude earthquake that struck Cebu province in the central Philippines on Tuesday night could reach up to 60, the Philippines' Office of Civil Defense (OCD) said Wednesday.
* China's artificial intelligence (AI) sector has seen robust growth, with the number of enterprises exceeding 5,300 as of September, accounting for 15 percent of the global total, according to the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology. The industry's scale exceeded 900 billion yuan (about 126.7 billion USD) in 2024, a year-on-year increase of 24 percent, the data showed.
* The Russian Ministry of Economic Development has maintained its forecast of the country's oil production in 2025 at 516 million tons, with continued growth predicted in the 2026-2028 period, local media outlets reported on Tuesday.
* The United States has imposed a 10 percent tariff on most softwood lumber and timber imports from New Zealand, a move expected to hit the country's forestry and wood-processing sectors, industry groups warned Wednesday.
* Annual inflation in the eurozone reached 2.2 percent in September, up from 2 percent in August, according to a flash estimate published on Wednesday by Eurostat.
* Uzbekistan exported textile products worth about 1.7 billion USD in the first eight months of 2025, the National Statistics Committee said in a statement on Tuesday. Textiles accounted for 7.3 percent of total exports, the statement noted.
* The Asian Development Bank (ADB) announced Wednesday that it has approved a 299-million-U.S.-dollar loan as the final tranche of the Delhi-Meerut Regional Rapid Transit System Investment Project, which is India's flagship initiative in the National Capital Region (NCR), designed to advance sustainable urban transportation.
* Bangladesh's economy is estimated to grow by 4.0 percent in fiscal year 2025, spanning from July 2024 to June 2025, and is projected to rise to 5.0 percent in fiscal 2026, according to the Asian Development Bank's (ADB) outlook for September 2025, released by the Manila-based lender on Tuesday.
* Indonesia's disaster management agency said Wednesday that at least 91 were trapped after a school building collapsed on Monday in the Sidoarjo district of East Java province.
* Several provinces in Laos have been affected by continuous rainfall, causing widespread flooding, with further flood risks prompting warnings for residents to stay vigilant as river water levels continue to rise.
* Cambodia reported a total of 34 landmine and explosive remnant of war (ERW) casualties in the first nine months of 2025, down 12.8 percent from 39 over the same period last year, a spokesperson said on Wednesday.
