* Ratu Naiqama Lalabalavu has been elected as the new president of Fiji, after getting 37 votes in parliament on Thursday in Suva.
* The Asian Development Bank (ADB) approved an 80 million-USD loan to Cambodia for enhancing the access and quality of secondary education in the Southeast Asian country, the bank said in a news release on Thursday.
* A treaty that Russia and Iran intend to sign shortly will include closer defence cooperation, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Thursday.
* South Africa's trade minister said his country is pursuing more robust trade and investment ties within the continent and with China - its biggest trade partner - as the global trade environment becomes increasingly fraught.
* The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile Thursday morning, with the country's top leader overseeing the event and stressing the DPRK will not change its policy of developing nuclear forces, the Korean Central News Agency reported.
* Germany, France and Britain call for the urgent renewal of correspondent banking services between Israel and the Palestinian Territories for at least one year, the German foreign office said on Thursday.
* Saudi Arabia denounced Israeli attacks in northern Gaza as genocide on Thursday, telling foreign investors that some bilateral agreements it has been negotiating with Washington are "not that tied" to normalisation of its relations with Israel.
* Israel's military offensive in the Gaza Strip has killed at least 43,204 Palestinians and wounded 101,641 since Oct. 7, 2023, the Palestinian enclave's health ministry said on Thursday.
* A Hezbollah attack on northern Israel's Metula killed five people including an Israeli farmer and four foreign workers, Israel's Channel 12 said on Thursday, while Beirut said Israeli strikes had killed six health workers in southern Lebanon.
* Germany will shut all three Iranian consulates in Germany but allow the embassy to remain open in reaction to the execution of a German-Iranian national, the foreign ministry said on Thursday.
* The U.S. GDP grew at an annual rate of 2.8 percent in the third quarter of this year, the U.S. Department of Commerce reported in an advance estimate released Wednesday.
* The Bank of Japan (BOJ) decided Thursday to maintain its current monetary policy, keeping the interest rate steady at around 0.25 percent as it highlighted the need for caution in light of domestic and international economic uncertainties.
* Thailand's Ministry of Finance said on Thursday that the country's economy is expected to expand 3 percent in 2025, primarily driven by private consumption, exports, tourism, and investment.
* The Philippines' foreign investments yielded net inflows of 1.025 billion USD in September, 92.1 percent higher than in August, the Philippine central bank said Thursday.
* Hungary has proposed to increase some taxes in line with the July headline inflation rate from 2025, part of wider efforts by Prime Minister Viktor Orban's government to plug budget holes as the economy dips back into recession.
* Croatia's annual inflation rate in October stood at 2.2 percent, halting the gradual decline since May, the Croatian Bureau of Statistics said in a statement on Thursday. The country's annual inflation dropped from 3.3 percent in May to 1.6 percent in September.
* Greece's minimum wage will be indexed to GDP growth and consumer prices from 2028 as part of new labour rules aimed at protecting households income, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Thursday.
* Russia's Gazprom GAZP.MM said that it would send 42.4 million cubic metres (mcm) of gas to Europe via Ukraine on Thursday, the same volume as on Wednesday.
* Australia's climate has warmed by an average of 1.51 degrees Celsius (C) since records began in 1910, a landmark report has found.
* The impact of climate change could reduce gross domestic product (GDP) in developing Asia and the Pacific by 17 percent by 2070, according to a new Asian Development Bank (ADB) report released on Thursday.
* More than 2.8 million children under the age of five face dire humanitarian conditions as armed conflict continues to ravage across Sudan, international organizations and local authorities have said.
* H5N1 bird flu has been confirmed in a pig in the United States for the first time, said the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) on Wednesday. The Oregon Department of Agriculture said last Friday that the first H5N1 case was detected in a pig at a farm in the state.
