* Finland has decided to join the New York Declaration backing peace efforts and a two-state solution for Palestine, the government announced on Friday.
* U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Friday to rebrand the Department of Defense as the Department of War, reviving a name that was last used in the late 1940s.
* The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) on Friday released draft regulations that would lower the rates of sales-related fees for public offering funds, aiming to reduce costs for investors and encourage long-term investment.
* Indonesia is drafting an ethics guideline on artificial intelligence (AI) to mitigate the risk of disinformation generated by the technology.
* Hungary purchases openly Russian oil because it has no alternatives, while some other European countries are secretly importing the same crude through intermediaries at lower prices, Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Peter Szijjarto said in Budapest on Friday.
* The Unmanned Systems Forces (USF) of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said Friday that they had struck the Ryazan oil refinery in western Russia overnight.
* U.S. President Donald Trump said Friday that he would not attend the G20 summit in South Africa later this year, but planned to send Vice President JD Vance in his place. He also said the United States will host next year's G20 at his golf club, Trump National Doral, near Miami.
* U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Georgia said Friday that federal agents arrested over 475 individuals without legal status, most of them from the Republic of Korea, after executing a search warrant Thursday at a Hyundai battery factory in the U.S. state of Georgia.
* U.S. President Donald Trump threatened on Friday to impose more tariffs on the European Union (EU) shortly after the bloc slapped a 2.95-billion-euro fine, or 3.47 billion USD, on Google for violating anti-monopoly laws.
* A U.S. federal judge on Friday blocked the Trump administration from ending temporary legal protections for more than 1 million people from Haiti and Venezuela, allowing them to remain in the United States with work authorization.
* The UN General Assembly on Friday adopted a resolution with overwhelming support on cooperation between the United Nations and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).
* Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares said Friday he would support the exclusion of Israeli sports teams from international competitions, including the ongoing Vuelta a Espana (Tour of Spain) cycling race, over the Gaza crisis.
* Egypt on Friday condemned remarks by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suggesting Palestinians could be displaced from their land, including through the Rafah crossing on the Gaza border.
* Lebanon's government on Friday endorsed an army plan to disarm Hezbollah and place all weapons under state control, the state-run National News Agency reported.
* Brunei's central bank has urged the public to be cautious of financial scams circulating on social media. The scams involve videos and photos displaying stacks of Brunei banknotes, accompanied by claims that viewers can secure significant returns by joining live sessions online.
* Myanmar authorities have seized 420 kg of methamphetamine in eastern Myanmar's Shan state, the Central Committee for Drug Abuse Control reported late Friday.
* The Philippines' gross international reserves (GIR) rose in August 2025 to 105.9 billion USD from 105.4 billion dollars in July due to higher global gold prices and income from the Philippine central bank's investments, according to preliminary data released by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) on Friday night.
* Canada's unemployment rate rose to 7.1 percent in August, the highest since May 2016, said Statistics Canada on Friday.
* Rwanda's visa-on-arrival and e-visa policies have made it exceptionally accessible, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) said in a report.
* U.S. private space company SpaceX launched 28 Starlink satellites to low-Earth orbit on Friday. The satellites were launched aboard a Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 8:32 a.m. Eastern Time (1232 GMT), according to SpaceX.
* The number of people killed in a cholera outbreak in Chad since July has reached 113, the Chadian health ministry said in a statement on Friday. A total of 1,631 suspected cases have been recorded.
* Uganda said on Friday that it is on high alert following an outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which has so far claimed 15 lives.
* The spread of mpox (monkeypox) in Africa no longer represents a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), said the World Health Organization (WHO) on Friday.
* Hit by three heat waves, Portugal experienced its hottest and driest summer in 94 years, the Portuguese Institute for Sea and Atmosphere (IPMA) reported Friday.
* Tropical Storm Peipah has left 24 people wounded and 40 houses damaged in four municipalities in the central Japanese prefecture of Shizuoka, local media reported.
* The death toll has risen to 32 after a passenger boat capsized earlier this week on the Niger River in central Nigeria's Niger State, a senior official said Friday. The boat was reportedly overloaded and collided with a tree stump, according to preliminary investigations by local authorities.
* Cambodia recorded a total of 143 critically endangered vultures in 2024, the highest-ever number in the last five years, said a vulture census result released on Friday.
