* Newly appointed French Prime Minister Michel Barnier on Thursday pledged he would work with "all those in good faith" towards more respect and unity in a politically divided country after months of political upheaval.
*Japan's former environment minister and leading prime ministerial candidate, Koizumi Shinjiro, said on Friday he would call a snap election "at the earliest date possible" if he were to win the ruling party's leadership election this month.
* Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday called on the State Duma (the lower house of parliament) and the government to expedite legislation necessary for establishing international priority development areas (PDAs) in the Far East region.
* Thailand's House of Representatives approved a 3.75-trillion-baht (111 billion USD) budget bill for fiscal year 2025 in its third and final reading late Thursday after a three-day debate.
* The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) on Thursday denounced recent military exercises between the United States and South Korea, saying the joint drills "maximized" military tensions on the Korean Peninsula and vowed the country would build up its defense capabilities to guarantee national security and regional peace, state media said.
* Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio called on Friday to maintain the momentum behind an improvement in relations with South Korea during a summit with President Yoon Suk Yeol in Seoul on Friday.
* The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on Thursday that the agency will continue investigating the cause and impact of last month's fire at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (ZNPP).
* Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev on Friday expressed confidence in the outcome of talks between Russia and Ukraine that his country is facilitating to keep Russian gas flowing through Ukraine to several European nations.
* U.S. President Joe Biden will approve an additional $250 million in security assistance for Ukraine, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced at the start of talks on Friday in Germany.
* The British government said on Friday it would provide Ukraine with 650 lightweight multi-role missiles worth 162 million pounds ($213.13 million) to help protect the country from Russian drones and bombing.
* Australia's federal, state and territory governments have agreed to a new major funding package to prevent domestic violence and support victims.
* Pakistan's military said on Thursday that 90 terrorists were killed in 4,021 operations across the country in August.
* U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Thursday it was incumbent on both Israel and Palestinian Islamist group Hamas to say yes on remaining issues to reach a Gaza ceasefire deal, which has faced obstacles in negotiations across months.
* Israeli forces pulled out of the Palestinian city of Jenin on Friday, leaving a mass of damaged buildings and infrastructure, following one of the biggest security operations in the occupied West Bank in months.
* China has submitted a request to Canada for consultation at the World Trade Organisation on additional tariffs it has imposed on Chinese electric vehicles as well as steel and aluminum products, the commerce ministry said on Friday.
* The European Union (EU) on Thursday issued a warning about the ongoing detention of United Nations staff and other aid workers by the Houthi group in Sanaa, Yemen.
* South Korea's gender pay gap fell below 30 percent for the first time last year on faster wage growth for women than men, gender ministry data showed Friday.
* U.S. job growth likely picked up in August, with the unemployment rate forecast to have dropped to 4.2%, which would offer more assurance that an orderly labor market slowdown remained intact and cement expectations of a quarter-point interest rate cut from the Federal Reserve this month.
* Eight member countries of the OPEC+ oil-producing group decided Thursday to extend their voluntary output cuts by two months until the end of November amid sliding oil prices.
* The performance of manufacturing production in the Philippines sustained its growth in July, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) said Friday.
* Cambodia exported 412,023 tons of milled rice in the first eight months of 2024, earning a total revenue of 305 million USD, the Cambodia Rice Federation said in a news release on Thursday.
* The United Nations' world food price index eased slightly in August, data released on Friday showed, as lower prices for sugar, meat and cereals more than offset higher dairy and vegetable oil prices.
* German industrial production fell more than expected in July, driven mainly by weak activity in the automotive sector, spurring fears that Europe's largest economy could contract again in the third quarter.
* India plans to extend a ban on sugar exports for the second straight year as the world's biggest consumer of the sweetener grapples with the prospects of lower cane output, government sources said.
* Egypt's Suez Canal Economic Zone signed contracts worth $1.067 billion linked to several projects to manufacture chemical and food products and renewable energy components at the China-Africa summit, the prime minister's office said in a statement on Friday.
* The World Bank and French Development Agency (AFD) have given Uganda more than $600 million to fund infrastructure development and manage waste in the capital Kampala, the government and World Bank said on Thursday.
* Bangladesh's tax collection body, the National Board of Revenue, has reduced taxes on imports of onion and potato to rein in soaring prices of essential kitchen items.
* The Turkish government on Thursday lowered its economic growth forecast for 2024 to 3.5 percent while raising its expected inflation rate for the year to 41.5 percent.
* The International Organization for Migration (IOM) on Thursday issued an urgent appeal for 13.3 million USD to "help hundreds of thousands affected by Yemen floods."
* The second phase of administering polio vaccinations to children under 10 years of age got underway in Gaza's southern zone, UN humanitarians said on Thursday.
* Malta has joined other European Union (EU) member states to help Africa reduce further spread of mpox, the Health Ministry said on Thursday in a statement.
* Zimbabwe's Minister of Health and Child Care Douglas Mombeshora has urged fellow health ministers in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to deploy experts to countries that have been affected by mpox as a way of curtailing the spread of the virus throughout the region.
* The ongoing flooding has affected more than 710,000 people across 30 of 78 counties in South Sudan and the Abyei Administrative Area, the UN relief agency said on Thursday.
* August 2024 has tied with August 2023 as the hottest August on record globally, with the average surface air temperature hitting 16.82 degrees Celsius, 0.71 degrees Celsius above the average August temperature from 1991 to 2020, according to the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S).
* This September in Latvia has started with unusually high temperatures, with 26 new records set over the past few days, according to the Latvian Environment, Geology and Meteorology Center.
