Indonesia will no longer require people to mask up outdoors, its president said on Tuesday, as COVID-19 infections decline in the Southeast Asian country.   

Thailand's economic recovery continued apace, with its gross domestic product (GDP) up 2.2 percent year on year in the first quarter, official data showed Tuesday.

* India will allow overseas wheat shipments awaiting customs clearance, the government said on Tuesday, introducing some relaxation in exports after it banned overseas sales of the staple on Saturday.

* The administration of US President Joe Biden announced Monday that it is lifting some sanctions on Cuba, making it easier for families separated between the two countries to reunite and creating a more conducive business environment for Cuban entrepreneurs.

* Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Monday that he hopes to reach an agreement with the United States to hold the upcoming Summit of the Americas without the exclusion of any regional country.

* More than 260 Ukrainian soldiers have been evacuated from the Azovstal plant in the embattled city of Mariupol, the government-run news agency Ukrinform reported Tuesday, citing Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar.

* Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Finland and Sweden joining NATO would probably make "not much difference" as the two countries had long participated in the alliance's military drills.

* Finland and Sweden will be able to reach an agreement with Turkey over its objections to the two Nordic countries' plans to join the 30-nation NATO alliance, Finland's president said on Tuesday.

* European Union (EU) foreign ministers failed to reach an agreement on a sixth package of sanctions against Russia on Monday, including a controversial oil embargo.

* Japan's Cabinet will likely approve Tuesday a draft extra budget for fiscal 2022 to the tune of 2.7 trillion yen (20.88 billion USD) to help mitigate surging prices for energy, food and other commodities as a result of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

* The wholesale price index (WPI), or rate of inflation of items in wholesale market, in India surged to 15.08 percent in April, up from 14.55 percent in March, showed the data released by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry on Tuesday.

* Britain's jobless rate hit a 48-year low in the first three months of 2022 and employers paid bigger bonuses to keep or attract staff, according to data that added to bets by investors on further Bank of England interest rate hikes.

* Slovenia's economy expanded by 9.8 percent year-on-year in the first quarter of 2022, compared to growth of 10.4 percent in the previous quarter, the country's Statistical Office said on Monday.

* Bulgaria's inflation rose in April by 2.5 percent from the previous month and by 14.4 percent year on year, the country's National Statistical Institute (NSI) said on Tuesday.

* China’s Shanghai plans to resume outdoor activities in stages, with most restrictions on movement remaining in place until May 21. The lockdown is likely to be lifted by June.

* Japan said it would start conducting "test tourism" in the form of limited package tours in May as a way of gathering information prior to a full re-opening of the country to tourism.

* India's COVID-19 tally rose to 43,125,370 on Tuesday, as 1,569 new cases were registered during the past 24 hours across the country, showed the federal health ministry's latest data.

* The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has mobilised its military to distribute COVID medications and deployed more than 10,000 health workers to help trace potential patients as it fights a sweeping coronavirus wave, state media KCNA said.

* US health regulators are expected to authorize a booster shot of Pfizer/BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine for children aged 5 to 11 as soon as Tuesday, the New York Times reported.

* The Philippines' Department of Health (DOH) confirmed on Tuesday local transmission of the highly transmissible Omicron BA.2.12.1 subvariant of COVID-19 in the Southeast Asian country.

* The number of Australians taking precautions against the spread of coronavirus has fallen amid a surge in cases.

* Ethiopia and the World Bank have signed an agreement for a $300 million grant to help with reconstruction and recovery in conflict-hit areas, the finance ministry said.

* Heavy rains triggering floods and landslides over the past few days have affected thousands of people in India's northeastern state of Assam, officials said Tuesday.

* A 6.0-magnitude earthquake jolted Indonesia's western province of Bengkulu early Tuesday, but no tsunami is expected, the meteorology, climatology and geophysics agency said.

* The US Food and Drug Administration has decided not to authorize the antidepressant fluvoxamine to treat COVID-19, saying that the data has not shown the drug to be an effective therapeutic for fighting the virus.

* A chain of events possibly triggered by unrecognized infection with the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus could be causing the mysterious cases of severe hepatitis reported in hundreds of young children around the world, researchers suggest.

Xinhua/Reuters/VNA