* The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Wednesday urged policymakers to prioritize protecting the vulnerable through targeted support, while keeping a tight fiscal stance to help fight inflation.
* The dynamic zero COVID-19 policy used by China in the past three years has proven to be effective, feasible and scientific, senior health advisor Liang Wannian told a news conference on Thursday.
* Russia said on Thursday it had summoned diplomats from Germany, Denmark and Sweden to complain that representatives from Moscow and Gazprom GAZP.MM had not been invited to join an investigation into ruptures of the Nord Stream gas pipelines.
* Changing Britain's leader would be a "disastrously bad idea", foreign minister James Cleverly said on Thursday as he defended Prime Minister Liz Truss's economic plans which have caused discontent within the governing Conservative Party.
* The Indonesian Football Association (PSSI) and world soccer governing body FIFA will form a joint taskforce in a bid to improve crowd control and safety measures after a deadly soccer stampede earlier this month, officials said on Thursday.
* Russian President Vladimir Putin told his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday that Turkey was the most reliable route to deliver gas to the European Union and proposed to build what he called a supply hub there.
* The United States reaffirmed its commitment to defend "every inch" of NATO territory ahead of talks among defense ministers from the alliance on Thursday that will include closed-door discussions by its Nuclear Planning Group.
* Germany and more than a dozen NATO partners aim to jointly procure air defence systems that protect allied territory from missiles, eyeing Israel's Arrow 3 system, US Patriot and German IRIS-T units among the options, Berlin said on Thursday.
* Saudi Arabia rejected as "not based on facts" criticism of an OPEC+ decision last week to cut its oil production target despite US objections, and said Washington's request to delay the cut by a month would have had negative economic consequences.
* A decision by the OPEC+ oil producer group last week to rein in output has driven up prices and could push the global economy into recession, the International Energy Agency said on Thursday.
* Russian oil exports dropped by nearly 4% in September as sales to Europe fell sharply ahead of EU sanctions that kick in at the end of the year, the International Energy Agency said on Thursday.
* The international advisor of climate change to Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe said Thursday that Sri Lanka is very vulnerable to climate change as the dry areas in its north are getting drier and the wet areas in its south getting wetter.
* Finance ministers from across Latin America and the Caribbean on Wednesday called on the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to look at new finance tools to mitigate the economic shock of climate disasters.
* Cambodia's garment, footwear and travel goods industry has registered a 24 percent rise in exports during the first nine months of 2022, according to a news release from the General Department of Customs and Excise on Thursday.
* Wholesale prices in Japan climbed 9.7 percent in September from a year earlier owing to the yen's sharp decline inflating import prices for raw materials and energy, the Bank of Japan (BOJ) said in a report on Thursday.
* Food prices were 8.3 percent higher in September 2022 compared with September 2021, New Zealand's statistics department Stats NZ said on Thursday. The annual increase was also 8.3 percent in August 2022, the highest since July 2009, Stats NZ said.
* The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) has sent a shipment of medicines and medical supplies to people affected by landslides in the north-central region of Venezuela, the organization said on Wednesday.
* Lebanon's parliament speaker Nabih Berri postponed on Thursday a session on electing a new president to Oct. 20, after the house failed to secure a quorum.
* The Pakistani rupees' upward trajectory for around a couple of weeks against the USD ended on Wednesday as the greenback was traded at 217.88 in the interbank, according to the State Bank of Pakistan.
* France's President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday called on the nation to withstand the different crises that France, Europe and the whole world are going through.
* The Netherlands is not against Romania's accession to Schengen, visiting Prime Minister Mark Rutte said on Wednesday.
* As Germany battles the energy crisis, the government, in line with the leading economic institutes, expects an economic contraction of 0.4 percent in 2023 and says that the country could slide into recession next year.
* France will deploy armored personnel carriers and tanks in central Romania by the end of October to strengthen the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) battle group stationed there, the Romanian Defense Ministry said in a press release on Wednesday.
* Nine Katyusha rockets landed Thursday on the heavily fortified Green Zone in central Baghdad before a scheduled parliament session to elect a new president for the country.
* Ecuador and Costa Rica have made significant progress in free trade agreement (FTA) negotiations, Julio Jose Prado, the Ecuadorian minister of production, foreign trade, investments and fishing, said on Wednesday.
* Ireland's energy minister said on Thursday he did not expect a price cap on gas used in power generation to be agreed by the European Union next week.
* France told TotalEnergies TTEF.PA to raise wages on Thursday as the oil firm's two-week standoff with striking workers, which has sapped the country's petrol supplies, dragged on.
* Norwegian police on Thursday responded to a threat made by telephone against the Nyhamna gas processing plant, one of Europe's largest energy export facilities, and later said the incident had been resolved.
* Iran's judiciary chief said on Thursday he had ordered judges to issue tough sentences for the "main elements of riots", sparked after the death of a young woman in custody last month, the Iranian semi-official Students News Agency (ISNA) reported.
* Ukraine's heating season will start on time, without any postponements or changes, Oleksiy Chernyshov, minister for communities and territorial development, said on Thursday.
* India's daily COVID-19 caseload on Thursday increased to 2,786, officials said.
* The number of deaths in Malaysia rose 34.5 percent to 224,569 in 2021 from 166,970 in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, official data showed Thursday.
* More than one in 10 Australians have suffered from long COVID-19 symptoms, a study has found.
* Two to three tropical cyclones are expected to affect the South Pacific island country of Fiji in this cyclone season from November to April next year, with the peak period running usually from January to March.
