AFP news

Reigning champion Iga Swiatek celebrated her 23rd birthday by brushing aside Marie Bouzkova to reach the French Open last 16 on Friday, while Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz both powered into the second week.

Negotiations towards a global agreement on how to handle future pandemics seemed on course Friday to be extended for up to a year as countries try to bridge their differences.

South African parties on Friday jostled to set out their stalls ahead of talks on a possible coalition government, with the ruling ANC on course to lose the absolute parliamentary majority it has held for three decades.

Newly convicted felon Donald Trump was set to address journalists Friday after the stunning guilty verdict in his New York criminal court threw the 2024 presidential campaign into uncharted territory.

A small, seemingly unremarkable fern that only grows on a remote Pacific island was on Friday crowned the Guinness World Record holder for having the largest genome of any organism on Earth.

Cricket ventures into uncharted territory on Saturday as the first ever major tournament to be staged in the United States gets under way in Texas with the opening game of the T20 World Cup.

Most markets rose Friday after falling for much of the week, with below-forecast US data injecting some fresh life into hopes the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates this year.

The United States and Britain carried out air strikes on Yemen in what they said was a bid to degrade Iran-backed rebels' maritime attack capabilities, with Huthi media on Friday reporting 16 killed.

The United States and China will resume military-to-military communications "in the coming months", US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Friday, as Beijing hailed the "stabilising" security relations between the countries.

Israeli forces on Friday struck targets across the Gaza Strip, with witnesses reporting air raids around the southern city of Rafah, the latest focus of the nearly eight-month war.

Gutted buildings, vacant windows and blocks bombed to rubble show the price paid by the western Myanmar town of Pauktaw for victory against the junta in the country's civil war.

Russian strikes killed three people in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, authorities said Friday, after the United States had authorised Kyiv to use American weapons to hit targets inside Russia in defence of the region.

Just after sunrise on the Afghan day of rest, two goldfinches puffed their chests and belted a song, surrounded by men straining to hear which chirped stronger in an age-old pastime.

Borussia Dortmund face the acid test after a fairytale run to Saturday's Champions League final as a star-studded Real Madrid roll into Wembley expecting to be crowned European champions for a 15th time.

Donald Trump once boasted "When you're a star, they let you do it. Despite the sounds and the fury of four years of tweeting, he got some things done -- Republicans boast that the economy was better back then, and he at least started the border wall he had pledged to build.

Donald Trump became the first former US president ever convicted of a crime after a New York jury found him guilty on all charges in his hush money case, months before an election that could see him yet return to the White House.

Spain's parliament gave the final green light to a controversial amnesty bill for Catalan separatists Thursday, paving the way for the return of their figurehead Carles Puigdemont after years of self-imposed exile.

Like millions of Ukrainian children, Kyiv teenager Sofia Klochko is finishing up a third school year marked by war and the constant stress of air raid sirens and strikes.

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg pushed at the start of a meeting of the alliance's foreign ministers on Thursday to let Ukraine use Western weapons to strike inside Russia, a move sought by Kyiv but opposed for now by its chief backer Washington.

The British parliament dissolved on Thursday ahead of a July 4 general election, which looks set to bring Labour to power after 14 years of Conservative rule.

The Australian government was on Thursday investigating claims by a hacking group to have stolen the details of 560 million customers from global events giant Ticketmaster, with the FBI offering its assistance.

Google will invest $2 billion in Malaysia to house the firm's first data centre in the country, the government said Thursday, making it the latest tech titan to pump cash into the region in search of growth opportunities.

Jurors return Thursday to a second day of deliberations in Donald Trump's criminal trial, leaving the Republican presidential candidate and the country waiting for a decision that could upend November's election.

The LGBTQ community faces "relentless opposition" across the globe despite some progress, said a report published on Thursday by an international advocacy group, with one-third of the world still criminalising same-sex acts.

Authorities arrested four people and took down or disrupted more than 100 servers in the "largest ever" operation against botnets that deploy ransomware, Europol said Thursday.

A second French actor has filed a legal complaint against arthouse film director Benoit Jacquot accusing him of rape, including when she was a minor, she and her lawyer said.

Extreme temperatures across India are having their worst impact in the country's teeming megacities, experts said Thursday, warning that the heat is fast becoming a public health crisis.

Africa's economy has shown resilience overall despite global conditions but growth needs to be in double digits to truly tackle poverty on the continent, the African Development Bank (AfDB) said on Thursday.

On the face of it, the villain from "Shrek", British singer turned TV presenter Cilla Black, and national service have nothing in common.