* French Prime Minister Francois Bayrou on Monday lost a confidence vote in the French National Assembly over his budget plan seeking to save billions of euros per year in government spending.
* Norway's ruling Labour Party is set to retain its position as the largest party in the Storting (parliament), according to preliminary results from Monday's parliamentary election.
* Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev proposed reforming the country's parliament into a unicameral body, the official Kazinform news agency reported on Monday. In his annual address to the nation, Tokayev said public debate on merging the upper and the lower house would take at least a year, followed by a nationwide referendum in 2027.
* Nepali Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli on Tuesday offered to resign for a political resolution of the problems facing the country. President Ram Chandra Poudel has accepted the resignation, the president's press advisor Kiran Pokharel told Xinhua.
* Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda on Tuesday approved the new government led by Prime Minister Inga Ruginiene, but left the posts of environment and energy ministers vacant, the Baltic News Service (BNS) reported.
* Thailand's Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was unlawfully allowed to stay in hospital detention and should return to prison to complete his sentence. The court's Criminal Division for Holders of Political Positions concluded that Thaksin's six-month hospital stay cannot be counted as time served for a one-year sentence.
* The Constitutional Council of Cote d'Ivoire announced on Monday that five out of 60 applications for the country's presidential election, scheduled for Oct. 25, have been deemed valid.
* The Indian government on Tuesday advised its citizens to defer their travel to Nepal until the situation stabilizes, and suggested that those currently in the country avoid going out onto the streets. The advisory came in the wake of the protests in Nepal.
* Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday announced financial assistance for two flood-ravaged states in northern India. According to media reports, 16 billion Indian Rupees (around 181.40 million USD) were allocated to Punjab and 15 billion Indian Rupees (around 170 million dollars) to Himachal Pradesh for disaster relief.
* Chinese President Xi Jinping called on the BRICS countries to jointly defend multilateralism and the multilateral trading system as he attended a virtual BRICS Summit in Beijing on Monday.
* Moscow condemned a Ukrainian drone strike against civilians in the Donetsk region, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova said on Monday.
* No sanctions can force Russia to change its stance on Ukraine, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the media on Monday. The remarks came as the European Union and Washington discussed additional sanctions against Russia.
* Poland will completely close its border with Belarus starting at midnight on Thursday, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced on Tuesday ahead of a government meeting.
* Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda met with visiting Polish President Karol Nawrocki on Monday, with talks centering on bilateral agenda and regional security, the Presidential Office said.
* Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi on Monday condemned Israel for its military operations in the Gaza Strip and reaffirmed his rejection of any attempt to displace Palestinians from their land, the Egyptian presidency said in a statement.
* Lebanese President Joseph Aoun on Monday urged Arab countries to adopt a unified stance in response to Israel's escalating attacks on Lebanon. He accused Israel of violating the November ceasefire agreement.
* Israeli warplanes carried out a series of airstrikes late Monday, targeting several locations across Syria, state news agency SANA reported.
* At least 23 suspected terrorists were killed in a gunfight with troops in Nigeria's northern state of Katsina, local media reported Monday, citing a source at Army headquarters.
* China has continued to be the largest trading partner of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) for 16 consecutive years, a commerce official said Monday. Trade between China and the ASEAN reached 597 billion USD in the first seven months of this year, up 8.2 percent year on year and accounting for 16.7 percent of China's total foreign trade for the same period, according to Vice Minister of Commerce Yan Dong.
* The World Bank has been backing a five-year initiative of 70 million USD to create a co-insurance pool that will cushion Philippine agriculture from escalating climate-related risks, the Philippines' Department of Agriculture said Monday.
* China's manufacturing value-added output is expected to have increased by more than 8 trillion yuan (about 1.13 trillion USD) during the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-2025), contributing over 30 percent of global growth, an official said on Tuesday.
* The Philippines' manufacturing output declined in July, with the value of production index (VaPI) declining 1.3 percent year-on-year from a 1.2 percent annual increase in June, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) said Tuesday. In July 2024, the VaPI for manufacturing recorded an annual increase of 6.6 percent.
* The Maldives has welcomed over 1.5 million tourists so far this year, a 9.7 percent increase from the same period in 2024, according to the country's Ministry of Tourism and Environment.
* At least 375 people were killed in a devastating landslide that struck a remote village in the Jebel Marra region of western Sudan in late August, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) reported on Monday.
* In an increasingly volatile world, the BRICS bloc of emerging economies is synonymous with the "defense of multilateralism," Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Monday.
* Restoring the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections in Iran would create "promising ground" for wider progress, said the agency's Director General Rafael Grossi as he addressed the IAEA Board of Governors on Monday.
* United Nations (UN) High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk on Monday condemned senior Israeli officials for openly making genocidal rhetoric against Palestinians.
* UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Tom Fletcher has allocated 5 million USD from the UN Central Emergency Response Fund to support the response to the floods that continue to devastate large parts of Pakistan, a UN spokesperson said Monday.
* Four volunteers will spend a year inside a 3D-printed habitat at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas State as part of a mission simulation to help prepare for future human exploration of Mars, the agency said Monday.
* Tajikistan has sent more than 3,000 tons humanitarian assistance to quake-hit people in Afghanistan, reported the state-run Radio and Television of Afghanistan (RTA) on Tuesday.
* An earthquake with a magnitude of 6.8 jolted the Vanuatu region at 2147 GMT on Monday, the U.S. Geological Survey said. The epicenter, with a depth of 10 km, was initially determined to be at 21.09 degrees south latitude and 173.80 degrees east longitude.
* A recent earthquake that struck eastern Afghanistan's Kunar province has left more than 157,000 students unable to attend school, with dozens of educational facilities destroyed or damaged, local media outlet TOLOnews reported late Sunday.
