AFP news

Former US President George W. Bush believed he had a "sense of his soul".

Having rushed to join the Ukrainian army when Russia invaded, Ivan Zadontsev is now exhausted as the grinding campaign enters its third year.

Stricken by drought and depleted by upstream dams, Iraq's once mighty rivers the Tigris and Euphrates are suffocating under pollutants from sewage to medical waste.

The sound of gentle tapping filled a jewellery workshop in southern China as a craftsman hammered pine leaf patterns onto a soft slab of gold in the style of old ink paintings.

Rockets at dawn, gunfire outside, hours of anxiety: a survivor of the October 7 attack shared his account of the day Gaza militants stormed his southern Israeli community, speaking into a video camera.

A Moscow court on Tuesday said jailed US journalist Evan Gershkovich would remain in pre-trial detention until at least March 30, ensuring he will spend at least a year behind bars, as Russia separately slapped a ban on a US-funded broadcaster.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken landed in Brazil on Tuesday for his first trip to the South American nation, arriving amid a diplomatic spat after President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva enraged Washington ally Israel by comparing its Gaza campaign to the Holocaust.

Eleven Ukrainian children crossed the border from Belarus to Ukraine Tuesday evening, in the latest return of children taken to Russia and occupied territories during the nearly two-year Ukraine war.

Ukraine said on Tuesday it was fighting off dozens of Russian attacks as Moscow claimed the recapture of a bridgehead, days after it seized a key town amid stalled Western aid deliveries to Kyiv.

As the Gaza war rages and the Muslim holy month of Ramadan nears, concern has grown over potential tensions at Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque compound, a past flashpoint for violence.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was absent from a London court due to illness Tuesday, as his lawyers launched a likely last UK bid to appeal against his extradition to the United States to face espionage charges.

Criminals have overtaken your computer network, they are threatening to leak your most sensitive secrets and your share price is tumbling.

The United States indicated it will veto a UN Security Council resolution Tuesday calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, while circulating its own proposal for an eventual truce as President Joe Biden comes under pressure to dial back support for Israel.

The mother of Alexei Navalny urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to "immediately" release the body of her son, in her first comments since his death in an Arctic prison.

An international law enforcement operation has taken down dozens of servers and disrupted LockBit, "the world's most harmful cyber crime group" according to British authorities.

Julian Assange, the 52-year-old Australian fighting extradition from Britain to the United States, is for some a fearless campaigner for press freedom.

Dotting the asphalt, they come in various shapes and sizes, costing drivers a fortune in vehicle repairs and even lives.

Israel hit Gaza with new air strikes on Tuesday as world powers grappled with how to broker a ceasefire ahead of a UN Security Council vote.

The glittering diamonds sparkle the same but there are key differences: mined natural gems are more than a billion years old, while laboratory-made rocks are new and cost less than half the price.

Ukrainian troops, reeling from the loss of a key town, now face "extremely difficult" conditions all along the frontline with Russia because of delayed foreign aid, President Volodymyr Zelensky said.

Palestinian foreign minister Riyad Al-Maliki told the UN's top court Monday his people were suffering "colonialism and apartheid" under the Israelis, urging judges to order an immediate and unconditional end to the occupation.

Alexei Navalny's widow Yulia Navalnaya on Monday accused President Vladimir Putin of killing her husband and vowed to continue his work, three days after he died in a Russian Arctic prison.

For nine centuries, Indians prayed at the forest shrine of Baba Haji Rozbih, a revered Sufi saint whose grave is one of the capital Delhi's oldest Islamic sites.

Israel has threatened to invade Gaza's Rafah by the start of Ramadan if Hamas does not return the remaining hostages by then, despite international pressure to protect Palestinian civilians sheltering in the southern city.

Americans haven't elected an independent president since George Washington, but a public turned off by two historically unpopular frontrunners appears more open than ever to the rich crop of wildcards who could tilt the election in 2024.

Prospects for an Israel-Hamas ceasefire dimmed Sunday after the United States signalled it would veto the latest push for a UN Security Council resolution and mediator Qatar acknowledged that truce talks on the other diplomatic front have hit an impasse.

Former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra arrived back at his Bangkok home from police hospital early Sunday, just six months after he was arrested following a dramatic return to the kingdom from 15 years of self-imposed exile.

This week's Berlin international film festival is wrestling on- and off-screen with the weight of the Nazi past and the menace of a resurgent far right.

South African nuclear scientists want to build a new generation of mini nuclear reactors, both to plug holes in their own country's blackout-plagued grid and to build an export industry for the future.