* Polls opened on Tuesday in Jordan's first parliamentary elections under a new law aimed at diluting the strong impact of tribalism and bolstering political parties, with Islamists expected to gain support due to anger over Israel's war in Gaza.
* China will host a friendly, united and fruitful Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit next year, Vice Foreign Minister Sun Weidong said Monday. Sun said China has taken the rotating presidency of the SCO for 2024-2025, and will host the 25th Meeting of the Council of Heads of State of the SCO next year.
* Wu Yanan, commander of the Chinese People's Liberation Army Southern Theater Command, on Tuesday had a video talk with Samuel J. Paparo, commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, in accordance with the consensus reached between the heads of state of China and the United States at their San Francisco meeting.
* Russian air defense forces intercepted and destroyed 59 Ukrainian drones over the Bryansk region, local officials said Tuesday. Earlier Tuesday, Bryansk Governor Alexander Bogomaz said on his Telegram channel that a large-scale attack involving drones had been repelled in the area.
* German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser has ordered the reinstatement of passport checks at all land borders to curb the number of people entering the country without visas, dpa reported on Monday, citing government sources.
* Germany's decision to impose stricter border controls has raised concerns within the Dutch government over potential disruptions to trade, Dutch newspaper AD reported on Monday.
* A global summit in South Korea on Tuesday announced a "blueprint for action" to govern responsible use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the military, with more practical guidelines than a similar document last year, but still legally non-binding.
* Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov on Monday refuted media reports claiming that Iran is supplying missiles to Russia, saying that such allegations are not always accurate.
* The United Nations General Assembly is likely to vote next week on a Palestinian draft resolution demanding Israel end "its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory" within six months.
* During an official visit on Monday to Saudi Arabia, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the two sides discussed a range of issues, including the Israel-Palestinian conflict and energy cooperation.
* Hundreds of farmers from across Australia held a protest on Tuesday against government farming policies they said were influenced by environmental and animal welfare activists and which were harming their livelihoods.
* Indonesia will establish the Nuclear Energy Program Implementation Organization (NEPIO) this year, the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry announced on Monday.
* South Korea's greenhouse gas emissions went down for the second successive year due to economic downturn, environment ministry data showed Tuesday.
* Children in Gaza, suffering the brunt of the humanitarian crisis, are missing classes at what would be the school year's beginning, a UN spokesman said on Monday.
* The United Nations (UN) High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk reiterated his call for an end to the conflict in Gaza in Geneva on Monday.
* High Representative of the European Union (EU) for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell on Monday condemned the Gaza crisis as "human-made" and stressed the need for a political resolution during his visit to Egypt's Rafah border crossing with Gaza.
* Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi and visiting Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen discussed Middle East tensions on Monday, with a focus on reaching a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, according to the Egyptian presidency.
* Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan urged the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation to convene an emergency summit to discuss the war in Gaza and what he called Israel's attacks on Jerusalem.
* Israeli missiles set ablaze a tent camp for displaced Palestinians in southern Gaza, killing or wounding 65 people, the enclave's civil emergency service said on Tuesday, in what the Israeli military called a strike on a Hamas command centre.
* Iran's Foreign Ministry Spokesman Nasser Kanaani said on Monday that diplomatic opportunities still exist to revive the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers.
* Emerging global trends such as geopolitical tensions, digital revolution and climate change are reshaping the landscape of trade-led development, the World Trade Organization (WTO) said in a flagship report released on Monday.
* China's total goods imports and exports expanded 6 percent year on year in yuan terms in the first eight months of this year, official data showed Tuesday.
* Cambodia's international trade volume reached 36.48 billion USD in the first eight months of 2024, up 16.5 percent from 31.32 billion dollars over the same period last year, said an official report released on Tuesday.
* Foreign direct investment (FDI) that flowed into the Philippines contracted year-on-year by 29 percent in June 2024 to reach 394 million USD, the country's central bank said Tuesday.
* Israel's 12-month budget deficit surged to 8.3 percent of the country's GDP by the end of August, or 161.4 billion shekels (around 42.9 billion USD), according to data released by the Israeli Finance Ministry on Monday.
* Iraq faces a budget crunch in 2025 due to the slump in the price of oil, the overwhelming source of government revenue, a top economic adviser to Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said.
* Brazil's financial market raised the benchmark interest rate forecast for the end of the year from 10.50 to 11.25 percent and from 10 to 10.25 percent for 2025, the Central Bank of Brazil said Monday.
* Malaysia's stocks of palm oil jumped in August to their highest in six months, as monthly production reached a nine-year high amid a slowdown in exports, the industry regulator said on Tuesday.
* Egypt's annual urban consumer price inflation rate unexpectedly accelerated to 26.2% in August from 25.7% in July, data from statistics agency CAPMAS showed on Tuesday.
* China's Ministry of Water Resources (MWR) has beefed up measures to combat floods that are likely to occur in the Yujiang River in south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, as heavy rain caused by Typhoon Yagi continues to batter parts of the region.
* New Zealanders have been suffering from orange juice shortage due to lower yields on the country's east coast due to the Cyclone Gabrielle damage and smaller output from Brazil.
* Fueled by excessive heat and drought, several large wildfires raged across the western United States on Sunday, forcing thousands of people to evacuate their homes and worrying climate experts about more fires in the coming days.
* The water level of the Vistula, Poland's longest river, has reached a new low as much of the country experiences drought conditions due to a persistent heatwave and reduced rainfall, the Polish Institute of Meteorology and Water Management (IMGW) reported on Monday.
* The extent of Antarctic sea ice fell to an all-time low for winter earlier in September, according to Australian scientists.
* Both Sudan and Chad have been hit by flooding, while Lesotho, another country in Africa, is impacted by drought, a UN spokesman said on Monday.
* The European Commission will on Tuesday launch a 2-million-euro (2.2 million USD) project aimed at addressing Long COVID, which had affected 36 million people across Europe in the first three years of the pandemic according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), the Commission said on Monday.
* A Salvadoran Air Force helicopter crashed on Sunday evening, killing nine people, including National Civil Police Director Mauricio Arriaza Chicas, El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele said on Monday.
