* Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his Japanese counterpart Fumio Kishida agreed on Saturday to strengthen security ties between the two US allies.
* Giorgia Meloni was sworn in as Italy's first woman prime minister on Saturday alongside her cabinet team, giving the country its most right-wing government since World War Two.
* Guinea's military government has proposed a shorter timeline for a transition to elections of 24 months, government spokesman Ousmane Gaoual Diallo said, down from a 36-month timeline earlier rejected by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).
* Burkina Faso's new military leader Ibrahim Traore on Friday named Appolinaire Joachim Kyelem de Tambela as interim prime minister, he said in a statement.
* Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin held a phone conversation over international security, the situation in Ukraine in particular, on Friday, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a brief statement.
* Azerbaijani president was positive about supplying Europe with more natural gas through Turkish territory, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Friday, following a proposal by Russia to make Türkiye a gas hub skipping Nord Stream.
* Lebanese President Michel Aoun and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Saturday discussed delineating their countries' shared maritime border, a Lebanese official said.
* Iran on Saturday strongly condemned a call by France, Germany and Britain for the United Nations to probe accusations that Russia has used Iranian-origin drones to attack Ukraine, its foreign ministry said. Tehran denies supplying drones to Moscow in the Ukraine conflict.
* The five member states of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) vowed to enhance their economic cooperation in various fields on Friday in Armenia's capital of Yerevan.
* An IMF team held productive discussions with Ukrainian authorities this week and will work in coming weeks on their request for enhanced program monitoring in the wake of Russia-Ukraine crisis, IMF mission chief Gavin Gray said on Friday.
* The Japanese yen jumped against the US dollar on Saturday after days of falling and local media reported that Japanese authorities intervened again to buoy the currency.
* Brunei's economy decreased by 4.4 percent year-on-year in the second quarter of 2022, statistical figures released on Friday showed.
* European Union (EU) transport ministers met in Prague on Friday to discuss the development of railway transport, the future shape of the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) and energy prices.
* Regulations prohibiting the sale, purchase or transfer of handguns within Canada took effect on Friday, as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the measure builds on earlier efforts banning handgun imports.
* Australian companies that fail to protect customers' data will face fines worth tens of millions of dollars under new laws proposed by the government.
* The German lower house of Parliament (Bundestag) on Friday approved a "defensive umbrella" against the energy crisis in the form of a 200-billion-euro (196 billion USD) fund.
* The Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) on Friday reported an increase in the presence of COVID-19 in its wastewater sampling.
* At least 15 people died and nearly 43 others were injured in a road accident in India's central state of Madhya Pradesh early Saturday morning, a local police officer said.
* Taliban security forces killed six Islamic State members in an overnight operation in the Afghan capital, Kabul, a spokesman for the ruling group's administration said on Saturday.
* More than 2.8 million people have been impacted by Nigeria's worst floods in a decade, with 1.3 million displaced and hundreds of lives lost, said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Friday, expressing his sadness at the devastation.
* Hurricane Roslyn intensified to a powerful Category 3 storm on Saturday as it churned towards tourist zones along Mexico's Pacific coast and is expected to make landfall by Sunday, the US National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.
* Dutch health authorities were overseeing the cull of around 44,000 turkeys on a farm in the south of the country after the detection of a highly infectious strain of bird flu, the government said on Saturday.
* Three people in an isolation unit of Uganda's main hospital have tested positive for Ebola, the country's health minister said on Saturday.
