Abe Shinzo announced on August 28 he was resigning because of poor health, ending his tenure as Japan's longest-serving prime minister.

* The Philippines reported on Monday 3,446 coronavirus infections and 38 deaths, taking its total caseload to 220,819 and fatalities to 3,558, its health ministry said. The ministry also said on Monday that five Philippine hospitals have been identified as candidates for potential clinical trials of a COVID-19 vaccine manufactured by China-based Sinovac Biotech.

* China reported 17 new COVID-19 cases on Aug. 30, up from 9 reported a day earlier, the country's health authority said on Monday. The National Health Commission said all of the new cases were imported infections involving travellers returning from abroad, marking the 15th straight day of no local infections for the country. China's total number of COVID-19 infections now stands at 85,048, while the death toll remained unchanged at 4,634.

* Brazil registered 566 additional coronavirus deaths over the past 24 hours and 16,158 new cases, the Health Ministry said on Sunday (August 30) evening. The nation has now registered 120,828 deaths attributed to the novel coronavirus and 3,862,311 confirmed cases. Sundays tend to have relatively low coronavirus numbers in Brazil because of delays in testing by the nation's state governments.

* India reported 78,512 novel coronavirus infections on Monday, more than any other country but fewer than the previous day when it posted the world's biggest, single-day tally, as authorities looked to open more sectors of the economy. On Sunday, India's total of 78,761 new cases exceeded the previous global record of 77,299 in the United States on July 16, a Reuters tally of official data showed.

* Russia reported 4,993 new cases of the coronavirus on Monday, bringing its nationwide tally to 995,319, the fourth largest caseload in the world. Russia's coronavirus taskforce said 83 people had died over the last 24 hours, pushing the official death toll to 17,176.

* Mexico's health ministry on Sunday reported 4,129 new confirmed novel coronavirus infections and 339 additional fatalities, bringing the total number to 595,841 cases and 64,158 deaths. The government has said the real number of infected people is likely significantly higher than the number of confirmed cases.

* The Paris local municipality said on Monday that it would look to make free COVID-19 testing available in all of the capital's 20 districts (arrondissements), as authorities battle against signs of a re-emergence of the virus in France. The Paris mayor's office added in a statement that from Monday onwards, there would be three permanent laboratories set up to conduct free COVID-19 tests, as well as two other mobile laboratories that would go around the capital.

* Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo told US President Donald Trump that the strengthening of their two nations' alliance would be maintained even after Abe's departure from office, a Japanese government spokesman said on Monday. Abe announced on Friday he was resigning because of poor health, his long-running battle with ulcerative colitis ending his tenure as Japan's longest-serving prime minister.

* The Spanish economy has been growing at a rate of more than 10% so far in the third quarter following a record drop in the preceding quarter due to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, Economy Minister Nadia Calvino said on Monday. She also said that the labour market had already begun to recover.

* Private tuition centres shut for the first time in Republic of Korea's capital on Monday and traffic was light on the first working day of tighter social-distancing rules aimed at halting a second wave of novel coronavirus infections. The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) reported 238 new cases as of midnight on Sunday, mostly in Seoul and surrounding regions, the 18th day of triple-digit rises in daily infections. The ROK has reported a total of 19,947 infections and 324 deaths from COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus.

* The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 610 to 242,381, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Monday. The reported death toll rose by three to 9,298, the tally showed.

* The United Kingdom recorded 1,715 daily confirmed cases of COVID-19, according to government data on Sunday, the highest level since June 4. One person had died within 28 days of testing positive for the disease, it said.

* Top aides to US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a historic first flight from Tel Aviv to the United Arab Emirates on Monday to finalise a pact marking open relations between the Gulf power and Israel. Announced on Aug. 13, the normalisation deal is the first such accommodation between an Arab country and Israel in more than 20 years and was catalysed largely by shared fears of Iran.

* A landslide and floods caused by heavy rains have killed at least 41 people in Nepal and India in the past week, officials said on Monday, as the annual monsoon season enters its final stretch after claiming hundreds of lives in South Asia.

* Sudan's government signed a peace agreement with the country's five key rebel groups on Monday, a significant step in the transitional leadership's goal of resolving multiple, deep-rooted civil conflicts. The rebel groups that signed the deal include the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and Minni Minawi's Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), both of the western region of Darfur, and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N) led by Malik Agar, present in South Kordofan and Blue Nile.

* Coronavirus cases in Colombia surpassed 600,000 on Sunday as deaths from the virus approach 19,400, ahead of the end to more than five months of lockdown. The Andean country has 607,938 confirmed cases of the virus according to the health ministry, with 19,364 reported deaths. Active cases number 136,702. President Ivan Duque declared a nationwide lockdown to slow the spread of the virus in late March. The measure will end on Monday when the country begins a month-long "selective" quarantine.

* Jordan reported 73 new cases of COVID-19 on Sunday, its highest daily tally since the start of the outbreak, the health ministry said. The country's total number of confirmed infections now stands at 1,966, with 15 deaths, since the first case surfaced in early March, according to the health ministry.

* At least three migrants, two men and a woman, died when a fire broke out on a boat carrying around 20 of them close to the southern coast of Italy on Sunday, police and health officials said. Another five migrants were injured and taken to hospitals, health authorities in the Italian port city of Crotone said, adding that two of them were in a serious condition.

* Ghana will reopen air borders to international travel as of Sept. 1 after closing them in March to limit the spread of the coronavirus, President Nana Akufo-Addo said in a speech to the nation on Sunday. Land and sea borders will remain closed, he said.