* At the invitation of Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will pay an official visit to China on Nov. 4, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin announced on Friday.
* Singapore's Ministry of Manpower announced on Friday that the country's labor market continued improving in the third quarter of 2022, but there are some early indications of easing in the momentum of improvement amid slower economic growth.
* Cuban legislators on Thursday condemned the intensification of the US trade embargo against the Caribbean nation during a parliamentary hearing.
* The Indian government on Friday announced amendments to its information technology (IT) rules that will apply to social media companies.
* Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu on Friday said that the "partial mobilisation" Russia announced in September was complete.
* Thousands of Czechs protested in Prague on Friday, demanding the government step down to allow an early election and calling for talks with Russia on gas supplies ahead of winter.
* Finland and Sweden are committed to joining the NATO military alliance simultaneously, the Nordic neighbours' prime ministers said on Friday.
* Sweden has ordered additional investigations to be carried out of the damage done last month to the two Nord Stream pipelines, the prosecutor in charge of the case said in a statement on Friday.
* French President Emmanuel Macron had a phone conversation with Britain's new prime minister, Rishi Sunak, in which the two leaders agreed to prepare a bilateral summit next year, the presidential office in Paris said on Friday.
* Iraqi lawmakers approved a new government on Thursday ending more than a year of deadlock, but still faces many challenges.
* The US economy saw its first period of positive growth this year in the third quarter, according to data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis released Thursday.
* The only way forward to addressing the energy crisis is through cooperation and unity among the member states of the European Union (EU), Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and visiting German Chancellor Olaf Scholz agreed in Athen on Thursday.
* The International Monetary Fund (IMF) said in a report released on Friday that economic growth in the Asia and Pacific region is expected to slow down in 2022 and 2023.
* The European Central Bank (ECB) on Thursday decided to raise key interest rates by 75 basis points after a regular governing council meeting.
* Australia will spend A$800 million ($516 million) to repair, retrofit and buy back homes in the flood-prone northwest of the country's largest state as the region recovers from its third inundation this year.
* The European Union struck a deal on Thursday on a law to effectively ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2035, aiming to speed up the switch to electric vehicles and combat climate change.
* Portugal's parliament easily approved the majority Socialist government's 2023 budget bill on its first reading on Thursday, paving the way for planned further deficit and debt reductions despite a sharp economic slowdown.
* France's economy eked out meagre growth in the third quarter as household spending stagnated and a sharp jump in inflation in October signalled headwinds looming in the final quarter of the year.
* Saudi Arabia's Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman held discussions on supporting and increasing the stability of the international oil market with European ministers, according to Saudi state news agency SPA.
* The Central Bank of Uzbekistan has decided to keep its main interest rate unchanged at 15 percent annually as the macroeconomic situation stabilizes in the country, the bank said on Thursday.
* Elon Musk completed his deal to buy Twitter at 44 billion USD Thursday, gaining control of the social network company, CNN reported, citing sources familiar with the deal.
* France's consumer price index (CPI) is estimated to rebound to 6.2 percent from a year earlier in October, provisional data from the French National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) showed on Friday.
* Germany's economy avoided a recession as the gross domestic product (GDP) in the third quarter (Q3) of this year rose by 0.3 percent over the April-June period, the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) said on Friday.
* The European Union (EU) will provide 80 million euros (79.7 million USD) in grants to Albania to tackle energy crisis, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Thursday.
* Italian inflation surged to a new record high in October, data showed on Friday, underscoring the economic challenges facing new Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and increasing the risk of a further rise in the euro zone as a whole.
* The government of Finland has earmarked six million euros (5.98 million USD) for the construction of a three-km pilot section of a fence on the country's border with Russia, it said in a press release on Thursday.
* Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz visited Türkiye on Thursday for the first meeting between the two countries' defense ministers since 2010 after years of strain in bilateral ties.
* Lebanese President Michel Aoun and a visiting Cypriot delegation on Friday kicked off the negotiation to demarcate maritime borders, said a statement by Lebanon's Presidency.
* Russia's Progress MS-21 cargo spacecraft successfully docked with the Russian segment of the International Space Station (ISS) early Friday, the website of Russia's state space corporation Roscosmos reported.
* Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday announced that he would attend the 31st session of the Arab League summit scheduled to be held in Algiers, Algeria, on Nov. 1 for two days.
* More than 3.4 million displaced people and their hosts are in dire need of aid following the recent destructive flooding in Nigeria, Chad, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali and Cameroon, the UN refugee agency warned on Friday.
* Israeli forces killed two Palestinian militants on Friday, Palestinian sources said, in what the Israeli military said was a response to a drive-by shooting at soldiers in the occupied West Bank.
* Australia's Energy Minister Chris Bowen said on Friday the country could not rule out price caps on energy bills.
* In what is believed to be a world first, China's commerical capital of Shanghai this week introduced a new type of COVID-19 vaccine that is inhaled rather than administered via injection.
* The US National Institutes of Health's $1 billion RECOVER Initiative has picked Pfizer Inc's PFE.Nantiviral drug Paxlovid as the first treatment it will study in patients with long COVID, organizers of the study said on Thursday.
* Italian doctors and nurses suspended from work because they are not vaccinated against Covid-19 will soon be reinstated, new Health Minister Orazio Schillaci said on Friday.
* Ethiopia's Tigray region has run out of medical supplies such as vaccines, antibiotics and insulin, World Health Organization officials said on Friday, warning that many deaths were probably going unrecorded from preventable and treatable diseases.
* Philippine search and rescue teams pulled bodies from water and thick mud on Friday, bringing to 42 the death toll from flooding and landslides triggered by a storm, with dozens more feared buried.
* The recent devastating floods in Pakistan have inflicted damage and losses of over 30 billion USD to the South Asian country, the Ministry for Planning, Development and Special Initiatives said in a report on Friday.
