* Republic of Korea's top nuclear envoy will hold talks in Seoul next week with US and Japanese counterparts over the Korean Peninsula issues, the ROK foreign ministry said Thursday.
* China's Shenzhou-12 manned spaceship has successfully docked with the space station core module Tianhe on Thursday, according to the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA).
* United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Wednesday called for the full respect of the ceasefire agreed between Israel and militant groups led by the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) on May 20.
* The US Federal Reserve on Wednesday kept its benchmark interest rates unchanged at the record-low level of near zero, reiterating inflation surge is "transitory" and resisting sending out signals on the timeline to taper its bond buying program.
* India's central bank in its monthly bulletin for June 2021 said the second wave of COVID-19 pandemic may result in a loss of US$27.11 billion in output during the current financial year.
* Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry on Wednesday called on the newly elected Israeli government to take brave decisions for reaching a peace deal in the region, the country's foreign ministry said in a statement.
* More than 945.1 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in China as of Wednesday, the National Health Commission said on Thursday.
* It will be mandatory for care home workers in England to have coronavirus vaccinations, British health minister Matt Hancock said on Wednesday, adding the government was considering whether the policy should be extended to healthcare workers too.
* Moscow city authorities ordered all workers with public facing roles to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
* Germany will be able to offer a vaccine to everybody who wants one by the end of July or early August, the health minister said.
* New Zealand will take up to the end of the year to inoculate all those eligible for COVID-19 vaccinations, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said, as she announced details of a vaccine campaign.
* Australia will recommend only people over 60 receive AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine, the country's Minister for Health Greg Hunt said.
* New Zealand's economic growth swept past forecasts in the first quarter on the back of a housing boom and strong retail spending, avoiding a second recession and bringing forward expectations for tighter monetary policy.
* Ukraine, which has maintained lockdown restrictions though the number of new COVID-19 infections has fallen, has set a record for the daily number of coronavirus inoculations, the health ministry said on Thursday.
* Britain has reported another 9,055 coronavirus cases in the latest 24-hour period, the highest daily increase since February, according to official figures released Wednesday. The total number of coronavirus cases in the country now stands at 4,589,814.
* Bahrain approved the emergency use for regn-cov2 medicine, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals' and Roche's newly authorised COVID-19 antibody combination, as part of its coronavirus treatment protocol to treat existing cases with mild and moderate symptoms.
* Pfizer said its oral rheumatoid arthritis drug Xeljanz reduced death or respiratory failure in hospitalised COVID-19 patients with pneumonia in Brazil.
* German biotech CureVac NV said its COVID-19 vaccine was only 47% effective in a late-stage trial, missing the study's main goal and throwing in doubt the potential delivery of hundreds of millions of doses to the European Union.
* Johnson & Johnson is expected to miss its COVID-19 vaccine supply target to the European Union for the second quarter after millions of doses were banned for use in Europe over safety concerns, an EU Commission spokesman said.
* Taliban militants' attempts to overrun Zinda Jan district of Afghanistan's western Herat province have been foiled and the militants fled away after leaving 20 bodies behind, said a statement of provincial government released here Thursday.
