* Asia's factory activity lost momentum in August as a resurgence in coronavirus cases disrupted supply chains across the region, raising concerns faltering manufacturing will add to the economic woes caused by slumping consumption.
* China's special envoy for Asian Affairs Sun Guoxiang visited Myanmar last week for talks with its military rulers, as a new route spanning the Southeast Asian nation opened up connecting Chinese trade flows to the Indian Ocean.
* India's ambassador to Qatar held talks with a top Taliban leader on Tuesday, the Indian foreign ministry said, the first formal diplomatic engagement since the hardline Islamist group took over Afghanistan.
* President Joe Biden on Tuesday called the evacuation from Afghanistan an extraordinary success in his first public remarks since the United States withdrew its military from the country on Monday, ending a 20-year war.
* OPEC and its allies will likely stick to their existing policy of gradual oil output increases despite revising up the 2022 demand outlook and facing US pressure to raise production more quickly, four sources said on Wednesday.
* China reported 19 new confirmed coronavirus cases in the mainland for Aug. 31, compared with 37 a day earlier, according to the National Health Commission.
* Around 14 million people in the United States received their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine in August, about 4 million more than in July, officials said on Tuesday as the government pushes inoculation as infections rise.
* Brazil recorded 24,589 new confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the past 24 hours, along with 839 deaths from COVID-19, the Health Ministry said.
* Australian authorities on Wednesday extended the COVID-19 lockdown in Melbourne for another three weeks, as they shift their focus to rapid vaccination drives and move away from a suppression strategy to bring cases down to zero.
* New Zealanders visited beaches and queued for takeaway food on Wednesday as tough lockdown measures enforced to beat an outbreak of the Delta variant were eased for most of the country.
* Israeli troops shot and killed a Palestinian in the occupied West Bank overnight, the Palestinian health ministry said on Wednesday.
* The number of disasters, such as floods and heatwaves, driven by climate change have increased fivefold over the past 50 years, killing more than 2 million people and costing US$3.64 trillion in total losses, a U.N. agency said on Wednesday.
* Japanese companies' capital spending rose in the April-June quarter, the first increase since the start of the pandemic and a sign of revived corporate activity even as a resurgence in COVID-19 cases hit the services sector.
* Australian home prices rose at the fastest annual pace since 1989 in August as lockdowns weighed more on supply than demand, though months of blistering gains are increasingly putting housing beyond the reach of many.
* US’s Idaho Governor Brad Little said he was reactivating the National Guard and directing up to 370 additional people to help hospitals as they were overwhelmed with unvaccinated COVID-19 patients.
* Sweden's minority, centre-left coalition said on Wednesday it would cut income taxes by around SEK10 billion (US$1.16 billion) in its 2022 budget as it looks to support recovery from the pandemic and lay the groundwork for future growth.
* Republic of Korea's exports accelerated in August, towed by solid demand for memory chips, petrochemicals and other major items, with the trade ministry seeing only a limited impact from the Delta variant across the region.
* Ireland, which had one of Europe's longest COVID-19 lockdowns, will drop almost all pandemic restrictions in October after one of the continent's most successful vaccine rollouts, Prime Minister Micheal Martin said on Tuesday.
* Israeli pupils returned to school on Wednesday with mask requirements and mandatory COVID-19 testing aimed at stemming a surge in coronavirus cases that has overshadowed the highly-vaccinated country's reopening.
* The number of foreign tourists visiting Spain jumped to 4.4 million in July, 78.3% more than a year earlier when global travel restrictions slowed international tourism to a near halt, official statistics showed on Wednesday.
* Four states in northwestern Nigeria have implemented limits on fuel sales, weekly markets and movements via motorbikes in an effort to curb banditry.
