China has given 1.07 billion people complete COVID-19 vaccine doses as of Oct. 29, National Health Commission spokesperson Mi Feng said on Saturday. That accounts for about 75.8% of China's 1.41 billion people.   

King Salman said on Saturday Saudi Arabia will continue supporting the stability and balance of oil markets, and also backs efforts to supply clean energy to the world.

* Mainland China recorded its highest number of daily local new COVID-19 infections in more than six weeks on Friday, as the country battles an outbreak concentrated mainly in its northern provinces.

* Russia on Saturday reported 40,251 new COVID-19 infections in the last 24 hours, its highest single-day case tally since the start of the pandemic. The government's coronavirus taskforce reported 1,160 deaths related to the virus, three short of the daily record of 1,163 set the day before.

* Britain will send 20 million COVID-19 vaccine doses to developing countries by the end of this year, in what Prime Minister Boris Johnson will tell other world leaders is a much needed step to speed up the post-pandemic economic recovery.

* France and the United States agreed on Friday to explore making arms export rules more effective, addressing a long-running source of friction as their leaders met for the first time since a spat over a US security pact with Britain and Australia.

* British Prime Minister Boris Johnson encouraged Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi to go further in his climate finance commitments to help developing countries adopt clean technology, his Downing Street office said on Saturday.

* The heads of the world's 20 biggest economies kicked off two days of talks on Saturday where they were set to acknowledge the existential threat of climate change, but stop short of radical new commitments to tame global warming.

* Finance and health ministers from the world's 20 biggest economies said they would take steps to ensure 70% of the world's population is vaccinated against COVID-19 by mid-2022 and created a task force to fight future pandemics.

* Saudi Arabia ordered the Lebanese ambassador to the kingdom to leave within 48 hours on Friday and banned all Lebanese imports in response to critical comments made by a Lebanese minister about the Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen.

* Malaysia, which said it would proceed with the procurement of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine for children, announced its largest ever budget to jump-start a pandemic-battered economy.

* The prevalence of COVID-19 cases in England hit its highest level since the start of the year, reaching around one in 50 people in the week ending Oct. 22, Britain's Office for National Statistics said.

* Brazil on Friday reported 394 new COVID-19 deaths and 11,965 confirmed cases of the coronavirus, according to data released by the Health Ministry. Brazil has now registered 607,462 deaths due to the virus, the world's second highest death toll behind the United States.

* Mexico added 4,001 new confirmed coronavirus cases and 320 more fatalities on Friday, health ministry data showed, bringing the country's overall death toll from the pandemic to 287,951 and the total number of cases to 3,802,287.

* Melbourne, Australia's second-largest city which has endured nearly nine months of lockdowns since the start of the pandemic, saw people flocking to shops and gigs for the first time in months on Saturday as public health curbs eased.

* Republic of Korea will drop all operating-hour curbs on restaurants and cafes and implement its first vaccine passport for high-risk venues such as gyms, saunas and bars.

* Greece mounted a rescue operation on Friday for a Turkish-flagged cargo ship carrying about 400 migrants after it sent out a distress signal off the island of Crete, the coast guard said.

* Mexico's economy shrank 0.2 percent in the third quarter from the previous three-month period, the first quarterly decline since recovery from the pandemic began, preliminary data from national statistics agency INEGI showed on Friday.

* Enrollment in US government-run health insurance program Medicaid during the pandemic grew 16%, with more than 11 million additional Americans signing up, the Department of Health and Human Services said.

* Global equities dipped while the US dollar gained as lower-than-expected earnings results from technology giants Amazon and Apple weighed on investors despite data showing solid growth in US consumer spending.

* Mexico's economy shrank 0.2% in the third quarter from the previous three-month period, the first quarterly decline since recovery from the pandemic began.

* Sudanese military forces tightened security in the capital on Saturday ahead of planned nationwide protests to demand the restoration of a civilian-led government to put the country back on a path to democracy after a coup.

* Regulations governing deep-sea mining will take longer to finalise due to the global pandemic, a group of Latin American and Caribbean countries said.

* Syria state television said on Saturday air defences had intercepted "hostile targets launched from the occupied territories" towards the countryside outside the capital Damascus.

* Takeda Pharmaceutical, the Japanese partner for Novavax's vaccine, is preparing to seek regulatory approval for a roll-out in Japan early next year, its top executive said.

Reuters