POLITICS & POLICY

Formal, tense and laced with distrust, the highly anticipated Saudi-hosted talks between the United States and Russia on Tuesday carried all the hallmarks of a major diplomatic showdown.

Twenty-five years ago, director Park Chan-wook risked jail to make a movie about friendship between North and South Korean soldiers, striking box office gold and beginning his actors' ascent to global stardom.

Top US and Russian diplomats will meet in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday for talks on resetting their countries' fractured relations and making a tentative start on trying to end the Ukraine war.

Top US and Russian diplomats will meet in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday for talks on resetting the countries' fractured relations and making a tentative start on trying to end the Ukraine war.

Israel was poised to again miss a deadline for withdrawing its troops from Lebanon after the military said Monday it would remain in five "strategic points" despite pushback from Beirut.

The head of the World Health Organization insisted on Monday it was "now or never" to strike a landmark global accord on tackling future pandemics, despite the United States withdrawing from negotiations.

Rights groups on Monday denounced an Australian plan to send three violent foreign criminals -- including a murderer -- to live on the tiny Pacific nation of Nauru.

Israel's security cabinet was set to discuss on Monday the next phase of the ceasefire with Hamas, as top US diplomat Marco Rubio began a visit to Saudi Arabia where he will push Donald Trump's proposal for a US takeover of Gaza.

The French presidency said Sunday that European countries should do more for their collective security, ahead of a top-level meeting in Paris to address growing concerns over US efforts to end the Ukraine war.

World number five Jessica Pegula believes the handling of high-profile doping cases involving Jannik Sinner and Iga Swiatek has shown that the "process is completely broken".

Lebanese media on Sunday reported that Israeli gunfire killed a woman as Washington pressed Beirut to disarm Hezbollah, two days before a deadline in the ceasefire between Israel and the Iran-backed group.

A year after Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny died behind bars, his supporters held memorial events on Sunday, with hundreds risking reprisals by visiting his grave in Moscow.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio will discuss the Gaza ceasefire with Israel's prime minister in Jerusalem on Sunday, launching a Middle East tour a day after the latest hostage-prisoner exchange.

All other German parties see the far-right AfD as a threat to democracy, but the anti-immigration party has a powerful friend abroad: Elon Musk, the loudhailer voice of Team Trump.

An intense Israeli military raid had already sent Qusay Farahat fleeing his home in the occupied West Bank, but the offensive has since expanded, threatening a relative's house where he sought shelter.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Friday that a Russian drone had struck a cover built to contain radiation at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, adding that radiation levels were normal.

Mexico on Thursday threatened to sue Google over its changing the Gulf of Mexico's name to "Gulf of America" for Maps users in the United States to comply with President Donald Trump's executive order.

Donald Trump unveiled an extraordinary vision of a shake-up to the world order Thursday, eyeing a three-way summit with the Russian and Chinese leaders just a day after saying he had agreed with Vladimir Putin to start Ukraine peace talks.

In a desolate area of Syria where Lebanese militant group Hezbollah once held sway, security forces shot open the gates to an abandoned building and found a defunct drug factory.

At a scam compound in Myanmar, Filipina worker Pieta had just days to romance strangers online and trick them into investing in a fake business -- failing which she would be beaten or tortured with electric shocks.

President Volodymyr Zelensky is set to meet US Vice President JD Vance in Germany on Friday with a warning against trusting Russia's Vladimir Putin, as concerns mount in Kyiv and among its European allies that the Ukraine war will be settled over their heads.

On Ecuador's lawless southwest coast, drug gangs operate with impunity and terrified residents ask if their president's "iron fist" security policies are just words.

US President Donald Trump committed Wednesday to announcing "reciprocal tariffs" on other countries, saying he could sign an order for them within a day, a move that could open new fronts in a trade war.

Donald Trump's defence chief denied Thursday the US president was betraying Ukraine by opening talks with Russia's Vladimir Putin, as blindsided European powers insisted they and Kyiv must have a seat at the table.

While NATO countries living near the Russian border pay well over two percent of their GDP on defence, those further away pay less.

According to the Australian Defense Force, the incident occurred on Tuesday, when the J-16 aircraft released flares just 30 meters from the RAAF P-8 Poseidon.

For the first time in nearly two years of war, soup kitchens in famine-stricken Sudan are being forced to turn people away, with US President Donald Trump's aid freeze gutting the life-saving schemes.

US President Donald Trump revealed Wednesday he expected to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Saudi Arabia for Ukraine peace talks, in an extraordinary thaw in relations after a surprise phone call between the two leaders.

Imposing punitive tariffs on countries with high trade surpluses with the United States has been at the heart of US President Donald Trump's economic policy.