AFP news

Rescuers freed nine people trapped in a winding cave in Taiwan's mountainous east on Friday, while locating two others who were feared dead, as they searched for those still missing after the island's biggest earthquake in 25 years.

US Treasury chief Janet Yellen warned during a visit to China on Friday that Beijing's subsidies for industry could pose a risk to global economic resilience.

Asian stocks tumbled Friday and oil extended the previous day's surge on worries that Israel's war with Hamas could widen to a regional conflict with Iran as both sides ratcheted up tensions.

The staggering suffering, death and destruction of six months of war since Hamas's October 7 attack has widened the gulf between Israelis and Palestinians, leaving both feeling that the prospect of peace is ever more elusive.

The leaders of the United States and Israel were set to speak on Thursday after Washington expressed "outrage" over Israel's killing of seven aid workers and growing concern over its military operations in besieged Gaza.

Taiwan rescuers worked Thursday to reach scores of people trapped in highway tunnels as engineers began a massive clear-up operation a day after the island's biggest earthquake in a quarter of a century.

James Cameron, the mastermind behind "The Terminator", "Aliens" and "Titanic", has an exhibition opening in Paris Thursday showcasing his lesser-known skills with pencil and paper.

Peering through the window at a bustling crowd outside the Voskepar village council in northeastern Armenia, mayor Ishkhan Aghbalyan said locals are on edge over arch-foe Azerbaijan's claims to their lands.

US President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are set to speak on Thursday in their first phone call since an Israeli strike on a humanitarian convoy killed seven aid workers in Gaza.

A helicopter plucked six miners to safety from a Taiwan quarry Thursday as rescuers worked to free scores of people trapped in highway tunnels after the island's biggest earthquake in a quarter of a century.

Nearly six months into the Gaza war, with the families of hostages still held captive by Hamas desperate for their release, many former hostages are finding the words to describe the ordeal of captivity.

Russia said that its defence minister Sergei Shoigu and French counterpart Sebastien Lecornu discussed the potential for talks on the Ukraine conflict during a rare telephone call on Wednesday, a claim that Paris immediately denied.

The bodies of six foreign aid workers killed in an Israeli strike were on Wednesday taken out of Gaza to Egypt for repatriation, a security source said, as Israel faced a chorus of outrage over their deaths.

A 12-year-old boy suspected of shooting and killing a classmate and wounding two girls at a school in Finland said he had been motivated by bullying, police said Wednesday.

As the euphoria of a municipal election drubbing for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ebbs, Turks are left watching their wallets with inflation that has sapped the longtime leader's appeal driving up costs for everyday basics.

Death has not extinguished the decades-long rivalry between two Indian leaders: both have now seemingly risen from the grave, in digital form, to rally their supporters ahead of national elections.

At least four people were killed and nearly 60 injured Wednesday by a powerful earthquake in Taiwan that damaged dozens of buildings and prompted tsunami warnings that extended to Japan and the Philippines before being lifted.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Houdini of Israeli politics and its longest serving prime minister, has been written off many times before.

On a street corner in the Sudanese town of Tamboul, dozens of people tap feverishly on their phones, calling loved ones and moving money through online apps.

World powers widely condemned an Israeli strike in the Gaza Strip that killed seven charity staff delivering desperately needed aid to the war-torn territory.

Sitting at home in Goma in the volatile east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rachel Sematumba describes herself as "a child of war".

Since US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen visited Beijing last year, the world's two biggest economies have resumed regular talks and averted major escalations in tensions.

Donald Trump doubled down on his heavily criticized warning of a coming American "bloodbath" Tuesday as he told supporters US communities faced "plunder, rape and slaughter" at the hands of illegal immigrants.

A 12-year-old opened fire Tuesday at a school north of the Finnish capital Helsinki, killing a classmate and seriously injuring two other children, with police saying they were still investigating the motive and lead-up to the incident.

Senegal's left-wing pan-Africanist Bassirou Diomaye Faye was sworn in on Tuesday as the country's youngest president, pledging systemic change, greater sovereignty and calm after years of deadly turmoil.

A deadly strike blamed on Israel against Iran's diplomatic mission in Damascus could trigger a spillover of the Gaza war across the region, an escalation Tehran had sought to avoid, analysts said.

Iran warned arch foe Israel on Tuesday that it will punish an air strike that killed seven Revolutionary Guards, two of them generals, at its consular annex in Damascus.

French writer Maryse Conde, who died on Tuesday at the age of 90, became one of the greatest chroniclers of the struggles and triumphs of the descendants of Africans taken as slaves to the Caribbean.

A US-based charity group on Tuesday blamed Israel for a strike that killed seven of its staff unloading food brought by sea to the war-torn Gaza Strip to help alleviate looming famine.